✨ Libra SZN ✨

In the wake of Virgo season, we welcome Libra season. This newsletter is a day late and timed with the sun’s transit in harmonious Libra.* Let’s commemorate this Air sign by shouting out some Libran authors and covetable gifts.

MASTERS OF BEAUTY: LIBRA AUTHORS

Ruled by Venus, Libra authors have an eye for aesthetics and style. After all, Venus is the mistress of love, beauty, and pleasure. Some of the most famous Libra luminaries include: Truman Capote, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Friedrich Nietzsche, Anne Rice, and Oscar Wilde.

But what about some authors of yore? Below are two Libra authors whose work and life has piqued my interest:

Elinor Glyn - October 17, 1864:

A British novelist, screenwriter, and taste maker, Elinor Glyn was a glamorous baddie whose novels, with their pro-sex leanings, were considered scandalous.

She began her writing career in 1900, at the age of 36, and bumped up her productivity to a novel a year as her husband succumbed to his debts and she needed to maintain her lifestyle.** She was a hustler and by the end of her life, she had authored more than forty books, numerous articles, and 28 screenwriting credits. She was also one of the two women present at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.

Though I cannot attest to the literary merit of her work, she was a pioneer in the world of romance and her reorientation of the genre was so compelling fellow-Libra Fitzgerald mistakenly considered her his contemporary though she was older than him by thirty-two years.

Glyn would frequently draw from her own life for material. For example, the novel Three Weeks was inspired by her affair with a Lord, sixteen years her junior. She also had an affair with the painter Philip de László and Lord Curzon, the former Viceroy of India.*** Yet, her romantic life is not the reason I find her fascinating. I am fascinated by her because she is the reason why we have the term it-girl. In 1914, Glyn wrote The Man and the Moment where she described the phenomena that is ‘it’ as something that “draws all others with magnetic force. With ‘it’ you win all men if you are a woman—and all women if you are a man. ‘It’ can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.”

Curious to know more about it? Here is a recording of Glyn describing this ephemeral quality in an interview where she aptly says, “How in the world can you have it, if you’re trying to have it?” And, here is the film It, a silent romantic comedy which Glyn worked on and I used as the soundtrack for this newsletter.

If you want to know more about Glyn, I’d like to draw your attention to this biography: Inventing the It Girl.

Katherine Mansfield - October 14, 1888:

A writer and critic, born and raised in New Zealand, Katherine Mansfield was an important writer in the modernist movement though she was shunned by the Bloomsbury Group for being an outsider once she moved to London.

Mansfield died at the age of 34 after a seven-year long struggle with tuberculosis. Despite her short life, this woman lived a bohemian lifestyle of love, travel, and productivity.

To be honest with you, I couldn’t keep track of Mansfield’s love life but here are a few highlights: As a young woman, she had a relationship with a Māori woman, Maata Mahupuku. She would also refer to her life-long constant, Ida Baker, as her wife and she married two men. One of whom, George Bowden, she left on the same night she married him.

Though she never completed a novel, her short stories, letters, and journals are a force to reckon with. She considered Anton Chekhov a literary hero and her writing style is humorous, a little absurd, and deeply nuanced. Even Virginia Woolf envied her! Woolf wrote in her diaries, “I was jealous of her writing - the only writing I have ever been jealous of.”****

When Virginia and Leonard Woolf approached Mansfield about a short story for Hogarth Press, she presented them with “Prelude,” a tale based on her own family’s move to a suburb in New Zealand. This short story was supposedly written while Mansfield was having an affair in Paris.

I know short stories are not everyone’s cup tea, so I thought I’d share the opening line of her short story “Bliss” to pique your interest: “Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at-nothing-at nothing, simply.”

Discover her short stories here, her journal here, and a biography or two here and here.

THE ULTIMATE LIBRA WISHLIST

Though the below list has been loosely compiled with Libras in mind, I do have to admit I would not be opposed to any of the below item(s) as a gift.

• Sweet, demure, and a little whimsical, bows are having a serious moment. They are absolutely delightful and very top of mind. So much so, I had to restrain myself from not including more than three bow items:

  • Simone Rocha Drip Earrings: When exiting the Spring Summer 2024 last week, I spotted many well-dressed women wearing these drop earrings. The graduating strands of faux-pearls evoke the shape of a dagger while the bows distract the eye for a hypnotic effect.

  • Ottolinger’s Ceramic Tote: If you watched my live with Nathan Nook’s, you will have already seen this handbag which fuses PVC with baby-pink bows. This is a bag that will be sure to turn heads.

  • Fidan Novruzova Pants: Let’s give Adidas a run for their money with these nylon bottoms that converge four graphic lines into a cute little bow. Also available as shorts.

• As a water connoisseur, I believe in the supremacy of sparkling water. Refreshing and effervescent, it truly is the amrit of the gods.***** Considering my water proclivities, I am drawn to the idea of a sparkling water maker. This is supposed to good and this one is supposed to be elite. But, if I’m being honest with you, I think the sparkling water maker needs a rebrand. Can’t we put our heads together and think of a better name for this device?

• Recreationally, I’m still on the hunt for a dream house and I would be overjoyed if someone would buy me the summer home of Modernist architect Marcel Breuer. This Cape Code house sits in the wilderness of Wellfeet, Massachusetts and has unfortunately fallen into a state of disrepair. If you buy me this house, you would also need to give me the budget to fix it. In order to make this work, I do admit that I would be willing to concede my summer home in Maine (iykyk) for this summer house on the Cape. That seems like a very fair trade if you ask me.

  • PS - Aren’t Wellfeet oysters just delightful?

• A modernist house needs some post-modernist furniture. How about this sleek, buttery Nicoletti Salotti sofa from the 1980s.

• The hard-working people at McNally Editions are doing the lord’s work as they republish ‘books from off the beaten path’ with snazzy covers. I want them all but right now I’ve got my eyes on The Girls: A Story of Village Life, Ex-Wife and A Green Equinox.

  • Spoiler: I will be discussing A Green Equinox in next week’s newsletter.

• I used to have a signature pair of sunglasses but I have been without a trusty pair of shades for many years now. It’s hard to find exactly what I’m looking for but I am partial to this square-framed style from Prada.

• For any Libras planning a birthday brunch... Might I suggest the Yasmine Top from Tove or a silk-chiffon halter top from Tae Park? Both would pair well with trousers or straight-leg jeans.

• Chef Thomas Straker of the aptly named restaurant Straker’s has a butter line coming out?!? Would make a wonderful gift.

  And, with that, I’m concluding this wishlist. Happy Birthday to all of the Libras out there. More life.

  

  via @allthingsbutter_ instagram

*I am sorry, Owen.
**This would be a great story line for one of Bravo’s Housewives.
***Still not monetized. Also wanted to share, Glyn’s novel Three Weeks “reportedly sold more than 2 million copies in English by 1917.” Source? Lit Hub
****Mansfield on Woolf’s writing, she “is not of her subject - she hovers over, dips, skims, makes exquisite flights - sees the lovely reflections in the water that a bird must see - but not humanly.” (via the Guardian)
*****Amrit means nectar. Amrit, the city, was also a Phoenician port located on the coast of Syria. Don’t ever say I never taught you anything. Just with this bullet point, I’ve taught you TWO things!