The Beautiful Things We Save for “Special”
Scarlett Column No. 003 | 3 min read
The perfume still in its box. The candle we refuse to light. The dress waiting for somewhere worthy. We are very good at saving beautiful things from ourselves.
I have been guilty of buying a beautiful candle and then refusing to burn it. Not because I didn't like it. Quite the opposite. It smelled wonderful, looked beautiful on the table and had cost enough for me to decide that lighting it on an ordinary evening would somehow be wasteful. So there it sat, waiting for guests, Christmas, a dinner party, a particularly beautiful evening or some other occasion apparently deserving of fire. Occasionally I would lift the lid, smell it and put it back. This went on for an embarrassingly long time. I had, in effect, bought myself a candle and turned it into an ornament.
Women can be very good at this. Somewhere there is a bottle of perfume being sprayed with such restraint that its owner may well bequeath half of it to her children. There are dresses still carrying their tags because the right invitation hasn't arrived, lipsticks kept pristine for evenings out, beautiful underwear waiting for something more interesting than Tuesday, and expensive body creams applied sparingly while the everyday lotion gets used with reckless abandon. Then there are the things that have nothing to do with beauty: the good plates, the lovely wine glasses, the crisp white sheets, the stationery too beautiful to write on and the tiny hotel toiletries brought home from a wonderful trip only to spend the next four years untouched in a bathroom drawer.
What exactly are we waiting for?
Saving something good can be sensible. A spectacular dress does not need to accompany you to the supermarket, and there is nothing wrong with keeping a favourite fragrance for evenings when you want to feel particularly beautiful. The peculiar part begins when special becomes such a demanding category that very little of our actual life qualifies.
We seem to have an internal ranking system for days. Weddings count. Birthdays count. Holidays certainly count. A romantic dinner might qualify. But a quiet Friday evening at home? Apparently not. Neither does breakfast on Sunday, dinner with people we live with, a bath before bed or the entirely unremarkable Wednesday on which nothing happened except that we were alive to experience it.
Perhaps beautiful things feel more precious when they are scarce. The expensive perfume remains associated with Paris because we don't wear it while buying groceries. The silk dress retains some of its magic because it hasn't been washed twenty times. I understand that instinct completely. I don't think everything beautiful needs to be dragged into daily service until it becomes ordinary. Some things deserve anticipation.
But there is a difference between cherishing something and being afraid to enjoy it. And sometimes our restraint defeats us anyway. Perfume changes. Creams expire. Candles gather dust and sometimes lose their scent. Clothes stop fitting, go out of style or stop looking like us. The lipstick we were saving eventually acquires that unmistakable smell that tells us the moment has passed. There is something particularly irritating about throwing away a beautiful thing you denied yourself the pleasure of using.
Perhaps Today is special enough
I think the answer is somewhere between using everything immediately and preserving our nicest possessions like museum exhibits. By all means, keep some things for occasions. Anticipation is one of life's pleasures too. But perhaps we could lower the admission requirements for what counts as an occasion.
Open the body cream after your evening shower because your skin feels wonderful when you use it. Wear the perfume to lunch with your sister or bff. Put fresh sheets on the bed for no reason beyond wanting to climb into them later. Take the beautiful glasses out when there are only two of you having dinner. Wear the lipstick to work. Burn the candle while watching a late-night movie. Use the soap you brought home from the hotel before you have completely forgotten the holiday it was supposed to remind you of.
And please wear the dress.
Not necessarily today. But don't spend three years waiting for a room grand enough to deserve it. You bought it because something happened when you put it on and looked in the mirror. That seems a perfectly respectable reason to experience it more than once.
The beautiful things in our lives do not all need to survive us. The perfume bottle is allowed to empty. The lipstick can reach the bottom. The candle should eventually become an empty glass with a blackened wick. There is a peculiar satisfaction in finishing something you adored because finishing it means you actually had the pleasure it promised.
Perhaps that is a better fate for beautiful things than remaining perfect.
Scarlett Column
Beauty Rituals & the Art of Indulgence