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I spend much of my professional life thinking about numbers, returns, and rationality—I love these things. I also love fashion, which operates according to rather different principles: instinct, fantasy, beauty and, occasionally, a complete disregard for practicality. I have always found the tension between the two rather compelling. One asks what something is worth; the other, how it makes you feel.
On 8 October, Sotheby’s in Paris will offer Extraordinary Objects by Boucheron, a collection of more than 40 archival Boucheron pieces, belonging to a European family and spanning the house’s creations from the 19th century through to the dawn of the 21st century. Among them are precisely the kinds of objects that have been dominating my imagination.
I have a fascination with objects that serve no obvious purpose beyond making life a little more pleasurable. The dramatic coat. The extraordinary painting. The impossibly small handbag. The lipstick applied when one is only going to the supermarket: The beautiful object that performs a perfectly ordinary function, but does so with considerably more ceremony than is strictly necessary.
It was this thought that came to mind during a recent conversation with a friend.
I was wearing something rather outlandish at the time, and outlandish is not an exaggeration. It was a runway piece from Maximilian Raynor’s last collection, reminiscent of Victorian mourning attire: entirely black, floor-length, with a veil covering the entirety of one’s face. Sensationally beautiful. And from my bag I pulled (forgive me, mum) a cigarette.
My friend and I agreed that it felt rather rude to simply smoke a cigarette in such a look. Such a look was worthy of a cigarette holder à la Holly Golightly. Of course, contemplating a cigarette holder led us to the consideration of cigarette cases. Just where had those gone? The cigarette case emerged as an answer to the problem of early mass-produced packets which were soft and therefore prone to crushing. Yes, in the century since, the packets have gotten more robust, but, to be frank, I am forever rooting around my bag only to find smooshed packaging and loose tobacco. Whyever did we give up the utility of the case and the accompanying beauty? Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
At some point my friend and I (incidentally, both of us Gen Z) realized we were no longer talking about naughty habits and Capote heroines—we were talking about bringing beauty and ceremony back.
Ceremony has fallen out of fashion. As a society, we have become accustomed to speed, convenience and the removal of unnecessary steps. We streamline, automate, and optimize, often without questioning what those steps might have added to the experience in the first place. But, there is a unique pleasure in ceremony. It creates a sense of occasion even when none is required. There is anticipation in opening a box, applying the lipstick, pouring the champagne, getting dressed for dinner. The ritual becomes part of the pleasure. And a good ritual should come with accoutrements (see, for example, the bamboo whisk without which, matcha is not matcha) and so much the better if that accoutrement is beautiful.
The Boucheron sale—part of Paris's Fine Jewelry Auction— includes several of these. One cigarette case is carved from pale gray agate, decorated with blue and green enamel papyrus flowers, agate cabochons and rose-cut diamonds. Another is rendered in black enamel, its floral mother-of-pearl medallions framed by diamonds, onyx and lapis lazuli. Each one is, on base level, a case for your cigarettes. But to describe them as such feels reductive. They are miniature works of art that happen to accommodate cigarettes.
Elsewhere, a pill box is carved from onyx and depicts a mother-of-pearl falconer on horseback, picked out with red and black enamel and rose-cut diamonds. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful solution to an extraordinarily ordinary problem (of where to store one’s dolls). And that is precisely the point: that someone once considered the act of taking a pill worthy of its own beautiful object.
The vanity cases are similarly extravagant even in their practicality, containing mirrors, lipstick holders and compartments concealed beneath carved mother-of-pearl flowers, coral, enamel and diamonds. They belong to a world in which powdering one’s nose happened in velvet-draped ladies rooms, not on the commute to work. Take us back!
It is tempting to regard this as simply another expression of old-world luxury, but I think it’s about giving greater consideration to the mundane necessities of life.
While we have become extraordinarily adept at making everyday life easier (the blister pack is more efficient than the pill box; the iPhone zoom is more useful than the opera glasses), we have become hopeless at making things fun. We think about items now as “smart” (phones) or dumb (anything not tech-related), but what about drama and beauty and for-no-other-reason-than-the-hell-of-it?
There is a particular kind of modern anxiety around anything that cannot be justified. Why did you buy it? Why did you wear it? What purpose does it serve? We are increasingly accustomed to treating time, money and objects as things that must earn their keep.
The Boucheron collection suggests another possibility: that beauty does not always need a practical justification.
There is no practical reason to carry a tiny handbag that holds almost nothing, to wear lipstick to the supermarket, or to set the table beautifully when you are eating alone. But there need not be. Some things are worth doing precisely because they are unnecessary.
And, in our increasingly efficient world, there is something quietly radical about making room for pleasure that serves no purpose at all. It’s not thoughtless extravagance, but a conscience decision to make something of an ordinary moment simply because you can.
