There are so many small habits and choices people make that feel incredibly chic to me. The tiny details someone includes in their everyday life often feel like the height of glamour. While there are countless examples, I narrowed it down to ten, in no particular order.
A patterned print is, in my opinion, quite chic. The rest of an outfit can be plain or a solid color, but I love it when there is one statement piece. My sister has a pair of cheetah print jeans, and the print is not loud at all. It is more faded, but it still makes the outfit stand out. A patterned or colored pant or skirt feels effortlessly chic and pulls everything together.
Knowing the names of flowers. I can identify a rose, a tulip, maybe a hydrangea, but anything more specific and I am lost. Where did you learn the flowers? Who taught you this? It is so chic to know them, especially if you learned them by your own volition. Maybe it is even more chic if the knowledge was passed down to you.
Using a butter dish. This year, I am living off campus in a house. We are not using a butter dish at the moment. We take butter straight from the waxed paper it comes in, which is both an eyesore and wildly impractical because the paper rips every time a knife touches it. Taking the time to put your butter into an actual dish is not necessary, but it looks good and improves the general vibe of the fridge (I also believe butter belongs in the fridge, not on the counter). The whole thing feels very chic to me.
Wearing heels casually. Wearing heels with pants on a regular day seems glamorous. My younger self imagined that grown-up me would be walking around in heels all the time. In college, I am not quite there. I feel like I would look a little out of place walking into my 10:05 class in a pair of heels. I am not talking about anything sky-high either. A small heel or a heeled boot is chic and instantly elevates an outfit that would look very casual with sneakers.
Being in your mid to late twenties. My sister is turning 25 next week (don’t tell her I’m publishing that), and she’s fully in her mid-twenties era. The post-grad stage seems a little scary to me because so much is unknown about where I will work or live, but watching her go through it makes it less nerve-wracking. She lives in New York City, and it seems so fun to have your own apartment with endless things to do at any moment. At twenty, I know I am technically an adult, but part of me does not feel like one yet. I will probably feel the same way in my late twenties, but truly being on your own seems like it creates a sense of independence. That feels very chic.
Having a niche hobby. The more niche, the better. One of my housemates is crocheting a hat right now, and I can confidently say that I could not do that. I feel that I lack both the fine motor skills and patience. She can crochet while she is talking to us, almost without thinking, and I find that incredibly glamorous. I play the fiddle, which I guess counts as a niche hobby too. There is something so calming about teaching yourself something that takes effort at the start but becomes a creative habit. It is also fun when people slowly discover this about me because it is not something I talk about all the time. This leads into my next point.
Having a hidden talent. It does not need to be a big one. Shuffling a deck of cards, whistling, or playing the harmonica impresses me. I cannot do any of those things, so I feel irrevocable jealousy when someone casually reveals a party trick with almost no effort.
Dressing up while traveling. Every summer, I would visit my family in Ireland. Every year, my mom traveled in jeans and heels. I can picture her airport outfit perfectly. It was like her unofficial travel uniform. I think it is chic to look put together in a place where most people choose comfort. I do believe in the idea of dressing however you want, but I also believe in the phrase look good, feel good. There is something glamorous about traveling in jeans, even on a red eye.
Accents. My mom is from Ireland, so she has an accent. I love the way she pronounces things and the words she chooses. She always sounds so eloquent when she speaks. It is effortlessly glamorous.
Print Media. If you are walking around with a book, newspaper, magazine, anything, you are effortlessly chic. Reading it on a park bench? Even better. I love having physical copies, especially in the digital age of constant screen time (you seriously do not want to see my weekly average). I was raised in an era of romcoms with female leads often being journalists which may or may not have inspired me to pursue this career path. Seeing these characters working in print media seemed so cool to me and had a lasting impact. I love paper copies of everything, I probably have a stack of a million notebooks that never get used, so if you actually write in your notebooks, enough where you are teetering on no more room, you are so chic.
Having hard copies of media, whether that be professional publications, or things you make, is just the height of glamour.
