There are three key takeaways I think are important to share, all worth your attention as a reflection exercise.

Thoughts and beliefs are at the core of your self-image. Beliefs are primarily inherited from your parents, your group of friends, and the environment where you were raised. They are often the root cause of how you show up when it comes to your confidence and the belief you hold in yourself. Once you’re able to change those beliefs, and the negative thoughts you keep coming back to, you’ll be able to level up and close the gap between who you are and who you want to become.

Curating what you consume, the people you spend time with, and the places you frequent is going to allow you to get closer to that version you’re becoming. This ties back to building confidence, because your input is determining the quality of your output.

And you need to continuously build your taste, because that is the filter you apply to the daily decisions you make. You can build it by being intentional with what you consume, and by exploring things outside your usual orbit. Taste is a library of thoughts, emotions, visuals, objects that you pull from on an ongoing basis in your day-to-day life.

These three points are very interconnected, because they determine whether you are going to express yourself or conform to societal norms. When you are firm in your beliefs, when you curate everything around you to align with those beliefs and build your taste, that’s when you’re fully able to express yourself regardless of trends and societal expectations.

Conformity is the default. Self-expression is a decision.

What's Worth Your Attention

Worth Sitting With

How far are you willing to conform to societal norms before you’re ready to blaze your own trail?

It’s important to remain aware that the more you conform, the more you lose yourself, and that there is a fine balance between the two.

Worth Filtering

Trends and standing out.

I just got confirmation to my theory, again, that the secret to standing out when you’re in a room full of women is your personal style and how you show up.

My approach to styling my outfits is two-pronged: accessories, or relying on one element that becomes the focal point, the centre of attention. Of course, I take into consideration the location, the type of event, whether it is more casual or more elegant, the people attending, and how I want to show up.

For this event, I wanted one element to be the focal point, so I decided to wear a Canadian brand called Ahiri, a pair of capris with a leopard print - fun, yet professional. The rest of the outfit was pretty simple and neutral. The result? I had five different women compliment my outfit, and then I was asked to film a video sharing the things I’m gravitating towards this summer, because “this girl has interesting leopard capris.” In that moment, I realized that I stood out, and it was my personal style and that unique element that was differentiating me from the rest.

Everyone is trying to follow trends to stay relevant. However, simply copying the trend will only make you fit in and be the same as everyone else. That’s why it’s important to adapt trends to your style, your personality, how you want to show up. Filter it through your taste and you stand out.

Worth Curating

The video I was asked to film, in list form: what I’m gravitating towards this summer. Glowy makeup, taking care of my nails, and clothes that allow self-expression.

From the salon,

— Sabina

Your mindset. All the thoughts, all the ideas, including the limiting beliefs. I include those deliberately, because they are often the barrier that keeps people from showing up, online or offline, in the first place.

Your image. How you present yourself, your style, how you show up, even the energy you arrive with.

Your expertise. Every experience you’ve lived that positions you in a particular industry or niche. What you talk about, what you care about, what you know.

And the one nobody really talks about: your taste. I look at taste as the filter through which you make decisions daily. Where you spend your time, who you spend it with, how you dress, your house, even your job. All of it is an output of your taste. And taste is built from a young age, through every experience, often shaping its direction without you realizing it.

Consider this a seed: reflect on how you are building taste. Because taste, in the end, is what shapes the output, and the output is the personal brand you’re putting into the world.

What's Worth Your Attention

Valentino x MyTheresa Soiree, Source: Magazinec.com

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Where does your taste actually come from? Not your moodboards. Your inputs.

Worth Filtering

On the two sources everyone is using, and why that’s the problem.

Stop treating Pinterest and AI as your main sources of inspiration. What differentiates you from everyone else is taste, and taste is built through what you consume.

When you type in keywords, the chances that you and another person get the same results are high. That’s what you may be using as inspiration for your outfit, your home, a creative project. It creates a sense of sameness, and we’ve been seeing it everywhere: on social, in campaigns, across creative work.

The same goes for AI, and I say this as a fan of AI when it’s making you efficient. Using it to generate creative output is the opposite of what you want when it comes to building and elevating your taste. It stops pushing you from an ideation perspective. It just delivers things to you.

There’s a time and place, and these are great tools. But if everyone is relying on the same sources for input, the output will look the same too. If you want to differentiate yourself, the input is where it starts.

Worth Curating

Sources that actually build taste.

Taste is a foundation. You keep building on it from childhood to the day you die, and everything you consume feeds into it. That’s why I like to compare taste with confidence: you have to practise it.

Museums. You may walk in expecting nothing and leave with ideas you didn’t know you were looking for. A tip: take the guided tour. The guide often offers a reading you hadn’t considered, and it opens questions worth exploring afterwards.

Magazines. The impact is visual, but go beyond the images. Every photo tells a story, and we rarely look long enough at the details: why they used certain elements, what the styling is saying. Treat it as a case study and it will give you more than a scroll ever could.

Architecture. Whenever I travel, architecture is what inspires me most. The shapes, the details, the sculptures, sometimes the murals. So much of what we build now is simplified. The older details reward attention.

Posters. In the subway, on the street, the ads you pass on your commute. They have the power to show a different story, a different take, if you’re looking.

Events and experiences. Brands are creating curated dinners and experiences, and more of them are open to everyone now. Attending, connecting with people, taking in the decor and the mood of the room: all of it feeds the foundation. The people do too.

One thing I’m working on: a notebook where I collect images, posters, even sketches that inspire me. Going back through it is how I shape my own visual identity. If you’re building yours, start collecting. Your taste needs a place to accumulate.

From the salon,

— Sabina

Romania is still very rooted in tradition: hand-made clothes, accessories, household items, growing veggies, raising animals, farming, in essence what I would call: very connected to nature. Looking at people, the cities, my upbringing, I realized that taste is the foundation you start laying down from a young age through traditions, culture, ideas. The passions and interests you have are informing the trajectory you are sort of meant to be on. However, as you grow up, become an adult, you either double down on these or you are steered away from them and leave them behind. What makes us step away from them in the first place is the lack of a direct path or other people steering us away.

I recently read a book called Becoming You by Suzy Welch, a professor at NYU Stern and the creator of the framework, and it talks about finding your Area of Transcendence which is the intersection of your values, aptitudes and what’s economically viable. This made me realize that my inclination towards creativity, fashion, and building community were areas I pushed away, despite my values and aptitudes lying at their intersection. But I believe that at some point in your life, you will go back to those areas of interest. And sometimes the only, scary, way is to create whatever you envision.

What's Worth Your Attention

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Your calling will always be calling until the moment you decide to listen.

Everything you loved before the world told you what to love, that was information. It still is.

Worth Filtering

On filtering what you were given.

Traditions. I think it’s no surprise that some of the greatest artists came from places like Italy or France, due to their art history, architecture and culture. Places and traditions are what shaped them, but that can sometimes have its downsides too. When those become a wall that’s preventing you from levelling up, that’s when you need to start filtering.

Beliefs. The cornerstone of change. Throughout our lives we borrow beliefs from family, friends, our circle, which influence our journey. The belief that stability is safer than ambition. The belief that some paths aren’t for us. The belief that you have to wait to be chosen. Reconsidering core beliefs and upgrading them is worth filtering as an added step towards becoming the best version of yourself.

From the salon,

— Sabina

If you read last week’s issue, you already got a hint and know my trip is more on the research side, viewing travel as input instead of escape.

When things get messy, we get this urge to pick up our things and go start over, or simply escape through travelling. But stepping away from something is a form of procrastination. You tell yourself you need a vacation, you go as far as you possibly can from your situation, with the hope that when you come back you will have either had an epiphany or your “problems” got magically solved in your absence. What we’re doing is postponing decisions and using travel (most often) as an escape. You’re in a different city, you can be whoever you want to be, nobody can remind you of your problems, you can completely disassociate.

But what happens when you make the decisions you have to make, or you carry your “problems” with you, and instead use travel as input? It’s simple. When you travel, you enter different worlds: cultural, political, social, energetic. This London trip to me was very intentional. I wanted to take everything in and let it speak meaning to me, and so it did. I picked up on things I’d never paid attention to before, and it inspired me in ways I can’t describe.

When you travel to escape, you move from one bubble to another. They’re sealed off because you’re going from a “fantasy” back to “reality.” But when you see travel as input, it builds you. It unlocks ideas and dreams.

What's Worth Your Attention: London Edition

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Art is such a powerful pillar of London's society, and you can see its influence in day-to-day life. My favourite part is that it allows each person's perception to tell the story. The artist creates a piece to tell a story from their lens, but you have your own perception and additions, and once you add that layer, it expands the value and impact. That's how we take part in culture. Art isn't finished by the artist. It's finished by us.

Worth Exploring

If London is on your list, there’s one very cultural thing worth experiencing, and that is hanging out outside, taking part in community activities and culture. Having lunch at the city square, drinking outside the pubs (standing), having a picnic in the park. This is how Londoners bond and share culture.

For art and culture, the Tate Modern and the V&A showcased different collections, but what stood out to me was that they touched on two aspects: how artists draw inspiration every day from life, society, and culture; and how our identity is shaped by these in turn. The Artist and Society wing at Tate Modern was the most stayed-with for me, a permanent display about how artists respond to the social and political worlds around them. At the V&A, the Design: 1900 – Now gallery traces over 250 objects from the 20th and 21st centuries, exploring how society and events influenced the need for certain objects, and how those objects evolved with the times, needs, and cultural references. Both highlight the current pulse in society and the friction points. Art and design are never made in a vacuum. They are conversations with the moment they were made in.

When it comes to culinary experiences, here are my favourite places worth exploring if you only have a few days in the city:

Hide. The best breakfast! Organic, artsy, deeply considered in its design. The kind of room that sets the tone for the whole day.

Brasserie Zédel. French-style, all art deco architecture and live music. The place for culture as much as food.

Fallow. Renowned for its chefs and inventive dishes, the food earns the praise and the atmosphere matches.

John Snow Pub. For the outside-on-the-pavement, drink-in-hand London ritual that no fancier place can replicate.

Notting Hill. Touristic but worth it, vintage shops, coffee spots, and streets that hold London’s history without being preserved in amber.

Worth Filtering

Style. So unique, with different takes on trends. The common thread was a satin skirt with a cute top, and dots, lots of polka dots everywhere. But the differentiator was that women showcased trends through their personality lenses, which made it so fun to observe.

Colour. I had a period where I was obsessed with the quiet luxury and minimalism aesthetics, and I avoided colour because I felt certain shades did not suit me. However, lately, I’m loving pops of colour, and London did not disappoint, so vibrant both in terms of fashion, art, and architecture.

Details. Architecture, art, museums, people. Because London has such a rich past, that is reflected in all these aspects and is so complex. Nowadays, from fashion to buildings, everything is mass produced, which leads to it being simplified. It loses its layers and depth; our critical thinking is watered down. Which is why observing, seeking details, and building layers (metaphorically and literally) is what contributes to culture and exercises the taste muscle.

Next Sunday, from somewhere different.

From the salon,

— Sabina

The men in the room did not do this.

I assumed it was anecdotal until I went looking. There’s a study by Christine Exley at Harvard Business School and Judd Kessler at Wharton, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, that found a persistent gender gap in self-promotion. Women rate their performance less favourably than equally performing men. And here’s the part that’s stayed with me: the gap holds even when researchers eliminate differences in confidence, and even when they remove all strategic incentive to promote yourself. It’s not about how good women think they are. It’s about what they think they’re allowed to say out loud.

The gap, by the way, arises as early as sixth grade.

So why is it hard to talk about a new beginning? It leaves you exposed. The start of anything is the most vulnerable point on the curve, uncertainty, work in progress, no proof yet. Society taught us that the outcome gets rewarded, not the start. Success is celebrated; the messy first chapter is something you’re supposed to keep quiet about until it works. What if you fail after you’ve told everyone? Building in public is a trend, but it’s also a luxury most women weren’t raised to feel entitled to.

But here’s the reframe worth sitting with. Waiting for the proof point, the milestone, the result, the permission, before you’ll name what you’re building, is the exact same script that hands you back to other people’s approval. I’ll talk about it when it’s real. But it’s already real. You’ve decided. You’ve started. The waiting for traction before you’ll claim it is not modesty. It’s the borrowed belief that you have to earn the right to be seen doing it.

The women I admire don’t wait for the milestone to name the work. They name the work and then build it.

What's Worth Your Attention

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External validation is not proof of concept. It’s just proof that other people agreed with what you already knew.

You don’t need anyone to confirm that you’re worth doing the work. You need to be the one who decides that, and then keeps going.

Worth Curating

Taking my own advice. Here is what I’m doing next, and I’m telling you in advance.

I’m going to London. Not as a holiday, as a working trip, the kind where the line between research, taste-building, and rest blurs by design. I’ll be writing from there and another city in Europe for the next two Sundays. Bringing back what’s worth bringing back: the places, the conversations, the objects, the rooms.

The piece I’m working on while I’m there is about the difference between travel as escape and travel as input, and why one of those quietly builds you and the other quietly empties you.

I’ll see you from London next Sunday.

PS: a few pieces I’m taking with me.

From the salon,

— Sabina

And that’s counterintuitive when it comes to goals, to the direction of your life. We talk so much about having a vision: for our life, for who we want to show up as, for who we want to become, and how we execute that vision and take action in alignment with it. That involves moving even through uncertainty and discomfort. We talk so much about self-care: exercising, journaling. But we don’t talk enough about freeing ourselves of the pressure to be efficiency-maxxing our life at all times.

There were times when relaxing felt like being unproductive, and I had to learn the hard way. Lately I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by consuming everything around me: other people’s dreams, their success, their desires, to the point that I’ve inhibited mine.

A lot of what shapes our thinking, our ideas, our taste, happens below the level of conscious attention. And in order for those ideas to surface, we have to give ourselves the space to stop reaching. It’s proven that you need to allow yourself to get bored, because that’s how new ideas come up.

Wandering. When you simply allow your senses to fully absorb what’s around you, and you bring yourself to places you’ve never explored, it’s uncharted territory for your brain. The added benefit: Flâner is how you’re actually unlocking ideas, resetting your nervous system, and building taste.

You have to disconnect from the world, to connect to yourself.

What's Worth Your Attention

Worth Exploring

Some of my favourite recent experiences to get inspired.

Thermea Spa. A no-phone policy on the grounds. I have to admit, I caught myself reaching for my phone more times than I could count, to search information, to scroll, to immortalise the moments. But I couldn’t. I realised we are so accustomed to using this tiny device, and now with AI, we don’t even have to use our brains. So I had to sit in silence. And that’s when my senses opened up to sounds, colours, textures, people. My brain had to create my world now. I wasn’t consuming someone else’s.

Canoe restaurant. Breathtaking views, set on the 45th floor, with a front-row seat to nature’s sunset spectacle while your tastebuds indulge on the food. I’m a sucker for views and outfits. The experience isn’t complete without styling an outfit and adding a little sparkle to your evening. I like to take inspiration from the place, and this time I chose contrast: earthy tones to ground me against the dreamy sky.

From the salon,

— Sabina

Covid loosened the dress codes. Most industries aren’t strict anymore. But the loosening didn’t kill the rules of style, it just made them invisible, which made them sharper. When there’s no uniform, what you wear becomes a real signal: of taste, of self-respect, of the version of yourself you’ve decided to be that day.

Trends don’t matter here. What matters is what your style is saying about you before you’ve said anything. The silhouettes, the textures, the tailoring, the way it all sits against your body and the version of you you’re stepping into that day.

Has it ever happened to you that you walk into a room genuinely feeling good in what you’re wearing, your posture follows, and suddenly the whole interaction changes? There’s a different energy in your voice. People treat you differently. They look up when you speak, they ask for your input, they value what you say. You stand out, and not because you’re trying to. That’s your style doing the work of a first impression before you’ve said anything.

I’ve felt this in different rooms, different contexts. And how people respond shifts depending on what I’m wearing. Most people treat style as something shallow, a way to attract attention or perform. But style is a strategy. A way to boost your confidence, shift your energy, and change how you show up. It opens doors that weren’t there a moment before.

Some people will call this superficial. They’ll say it’s unfair that what you wear affects how seriously you’re taken. They’re not wrong, it is unfair. They’re just wrong that it doesn’t matter.

I look at style as a reflection of interior life. How your brain operates, what you value, how much you care about expressing yourself. Everything you own says something about who you are. And the reality is, people want to do business with, hire, and spend time around people who present themselves in alignment with who they actually are. Industry matters, of course. But the principle holds.

Style isn’t about being seen. It’s about owning who you’ve decided to be, and letting people meet that version of you on arrival.

What's Worth Your Attention

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I was reading Emma Grede’s new book, Start With Yourself, and one of her reframes stayed with me. She pushes back on the idea of being grateful for what happened to you, because that framing makes it sound like life is something that happens to you. Which is false. We have control over our actions. We don’t have control over other people’s actions or beliefs.

What she’s pointing at, I think, is that gratitude on its own can quietly strip you of your own agency. The reframe she offers, and the one I’m sitting with this week:

Old thought: be grateful for what happened to you. New thought: feel proud of what you achieved.

Does success depend on other people? Of course it does. Nobody gets there alone. The collaborator, the introduction, the right call at the right moment, all of it counts. But here’s what the gratitude framing misses: the introduction only happens because you showed up. You made yourself visible. You took action. The people around you were the door. You walked through it. That’s not borrowed, that’s owned.

Things don’t land in your lap. And when they seem to, that’s the moment you have a choice: wait for it, or take action.

Worth Curating

A blazer chosen on purpose. Not the trending shape because it's trending, not the safe one because it's safe. Whatever cut your personality calls for, structured, relaxed, oversized, nipped, the point is that you chose it and it reads that way.

we’re obsessed with:

A pair of shoes you walk differently in. You know the ones. Whether it’s a flat with structure or a heel you’ve broken in, the right shoe changes your posture before you’ve taken three steps.

we’re obsessed with:

One signature piece you keep returning to. A coat, a watch, a particular shade of lipstick. Style isn’t novelty, it’s recognisability: the thing that makes a room remember you walked through it.

we’re obsessed with:

From the salon,

— Sabina

I’ll admit I love the sound of it. There’s something in delulu that suggests a real kind of internal confidence, the quiet certainty that you’re meant to do something. But never in the insult sense, and never in the faking sense. I’ve never believed in faking it till you make it. I believe in acting as if. That is a different thing entirely. Acting as if isn’t pretending. It’s expressing and empowering a future version of yourself into the present moment, even when the confidence isn’t fully there yet.

Which brings me to the concept that has quietly outlasted delulu: romanticising your life. It’s lasted because it’s backed by psychology. When things get messy, we romanticise, we find meaning, we find beauty in an ordinary moment despite its imperfections. The point was never to pretend everything is perfect. The point is to notice what’s good while the rest is still unfinished.

In positive psychology, there’s a name for this. The psychologist Fred Bryant calls it savouring: the capacity to attend to, appreciate, and, above all, enhance the positive experiences in our lives. Read that again: enhance. Savouring isn’t passive. It’s an active, intentional effort to make a good experience last.

Bryant’s model gives it three forms, three ways to practise it, starting now.

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Anticipation. Using your imagination to savour a moment before it arrives, letting yourself look forward to it, fully, rather than bracing for it.

Savouring the moment. Choosing one beautiful, meaningful thing in front of you and giving it your whole attention, as a way to block distractions.

Reminiscing. Returning to a moment after it’s passed. And here’s the part worth holding onto: sharing it amplifies it. The research is clear that telling a friend, writing it down, recalling it aloud reinforces the memory and deepens its impact. Savouring is rarely a solitary act.

This is what I mean when I talk about romanticising your life. Not the performance of a perfect one, but the discipline of noticing the meaningful one you’re already in. The details, the small things, the process itself. Because the ability to appreciate the journey, especially while it’s still messy, still incomplete, still not where you want it, is not separate from the outcome.

It’s part of how you get there.

Worth Curating

Objects for the practice of noticing, not to fill a moment but to make you feel it.

A candle with a memory attached. Scent is the most direct line to reminiscing: it returns you to a moment faster than any photograph. Choose one and burn it only in the evenings, or only on Sundays. The restraint is what makes it a ritual, not a habit.

Notes written by hand. Savouring deepens when you record it. A weighty notebook kept by the bed, not for productivity but for noting the one thing worth keeping from the day.

A good book. The kind you read slowly, on purpose.

From the salon,

— Sabina

From the moment we’re born, we accumulate. We grow up, we work, we buy, we upgrade: the wardrobe, the car, the apartment, the people we spend time with. Each phase asks for a different version of us, and the objects we choose along the way become part of the record. Past experiences don’t disappear; they add context and colour to who we’re becoming.

Psychology has a name for this. In 1988, Russell Belk introduced the extended self theory, the idea that what you own becomes an extension of your identity. Not just what you wear, but where you live, what you drive, what you keep on your desk. Possessions are instrumental, especially in transitional phases.

But there’s a condition. A separate study, Adam & Galinsky’s enclothed cognition, found that objects only shift behaviour when you believe in the meaning behind them. Put on a blazer expecting nothing, and nothing happens. Put on a blazer associated with authority, focus, the version of yourself you’re stepping into, and your behaviour follows.

Extend that beyond clothes, and the principle holds. The object works when the meaning is there. Without meaning, it’s just inventory.

This is where emulation falls apart. When the woman you admire buys a mini Kelly, she’s buying a marker: a milestone, a turning point, a private agreement with herself. The object is the receipt. If you buy the same bag without the same meaning, you haven’t bridged the gap between where she is and where you are. You’ve bought a prop.

The symbol isn’t the shortcut. The meaning is.

What's Worth Your Attention

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Bridging the gap requires knowing who you are and where you’re going. Three questions worth holding:

What am I actually admiring? When you look at the woman whose life you want, name the specific thing. Is it the bag, or what the bag represents? The home, or the discernment that built it? The wardrobe, or the clarity behind every piece in it?

Which symbols are mine? Borrowed symbols rarely fit. The objects that work for you are the ones that carry meaning you’ve defined: a catalyst for the woman you’re choosing to become, not a costume of someone else.

What does the meaning ask of me? The research only takes you halfway. The blazer doesn’t change you on its own. The work, the habits, the mindset, the practice is still the work.

Next Sunday: the objects worth owning when the meaning is already yours.

Until then, what’s on your desk, in your closet, on your shelf that you actually chose? Sit with the answer.

From the salon,

— Sabina

This week, I kept running into the same conversation about “the millennial crisis,” about “becoming,” about things being “in progress.”

The dynamics have shifted for us. Millennials were taught to follow a blueprint: school, university, job, marriage, kids, loyalty. The promise was that education and fitting in were enough, that the blueprint was the success. That promise no longer holds.

We’re what Marie Forleo calls being “in the messy middle of a becoming.” We’re reaching for a different kind of life, one where purpose and fulfillment thrive, where we live on our own terms.

But here’s the question I’ve been sitting with: is the messy middle keeping us stuck?

Because in transformation, doubt does what it’s designed to do. Your brain’s job is to keep you safe, and the unknown is, by definition, unsafe. The result is a low hum of resistance disguised as caution, of hesitation disguised as preparation.

So this week, let’s work through it together.

What's Worth Your Attention

Worth sitting with

Three frameworks I came back to this week, each one a tool for the messy middle.

Identify your inner critic, and recognize it isn’t you. When that voice shows up, ask: what values is it holding onto? Then ask: what are mine? The gap between the two is the gap you’re being asked not to fall into. The critic is loudest when you’re closest to becoming someone she doesn’t recognize.

Experience doesn’t equal confidence. The education system trained us to prepare endlessly: to credential, to certify, to get ready. Learning matters, and there are fields where practice is non-negotiable. But most of us aren’t there. Most of us are exhausting the world’s knowledge as a strategy to avoid starting. Permission slip: begin imperfectly. Things settle as you go.

Connect to your inner mentor. On Aspire with Emma Grede, Tara Mohr offered this exercise: close your eyes and picture yourself twenty or thirty years from now. Notice how she moves. Her energy. What would she tell you? How would she approach this? Your inner mentor already exists. The work is tapping in.

And the through-line, from Barbara Corcoran: build toward the vision of yourself. A business plan will change. A market will change. Even your goals will change. But the image of who you’re becoming.. that one’s yours. Nobody can edit it. That’s your North Star.

Worth filtering

In the messy middle, trends are seductive, they offer the appearance of certainty when you have none. Here’s what’s emerging, and how I’m holding it.

Printmaxxing - the death of quiet luxury. The quiet luxury era trained women to disappear into beige. Printmaxxing is the rebellion: layered prints, clashing patterns, individuality as the new flex. The thesis is simple: restraint isn’t taste anymore, it’s camouflage. After years of “clean girl” minimalism, the pendulum is swinging toward character, toward 2000s nostalgia, toward bold textures and statement jewelry.

But here’s the filter: trend-following is just a different kind of conformity. Quiet luxury asked us to disappear. Printmaxxing asks us to perform. The self-defined woman doesn’t choose between them, she chooses what makes her her, then wears it on purpose.

Everything-maxxing. Why are we obsessed with maxxing? For the same reason we’ve always chased more: levelling up. Different language, same impulse.

But I keep coming back to an idea I heard recently: not every year is a year for results. Some years are for learning. Some are for trying. Some are for the unglamorous work that produces the outcomes you’ll celebrate later.

So the question isn’t what should I be maxxing. The question is: what season am I in, and where does my energy actually need to go? Relationships? Style? A career pivot? A creative practice? Maxxing without that clarity is just optimization in costume.

Worth Curating

What you surround yourself with in this season matters. Two finds worth your attention this week.

Bathroom personality. Why does the bathroom get less attention than the rest of the home? It’s where many of us start the day; where I do my makeup, take the everything-shower, run a bath when the week has been too much. The bathroom has been treated as functional infrastructure, but the modern read is different: the bathroom as wellness corner, as private spa, as a room with its own mood.

If your home is a sanctuary, every room earns the right to express something. The bathroom included.

The Vintage Edit. Curating pieces and giving them a second life, with intention, is its own kind of luxury.

I spent the day at the Sunday Variety Market at St. Lawrence, and it was a portal. Pieces from the 1940s and the 1970s, sitting next to each other, telling completely different stories about how women dressed and what they valued. I came home with a few accessories that felt right for the season I’m in, pieces that lean into self-expression rather than performance.

From the salon,

— Sabina

The moment fashion lovers have waited two decades for arrived this weekend: The Devil Wears Prada 2.

The storyline has evolved to reflect a new reality (spoiler ahead): tech is reshaping the dynamics of fashion. The plot twist proposes that culture “must be left behind” — evolved and replaced by AI in the name of keeping up. “You go with what life throws at you.”

I’m a proponent of AI as a tool — but dismissing what shaped us to this point is where I part ways. The film served looks, delivered nostalgia, and left me with something more important: the conviction that the future of taste remains human.

I recognize what AI offers. But we are the taste-makers. We create meaning, carry emotion, cultivate culture, build community. Now, more than ever, self-expression is the advantage in a world of sameness. Your identity is brought to life through what you wear, how you live, where you spend your time, and who you spend it with.

That’s the work at the core of Modern Socialites: curating lifestyle with intention. Every week, I bring you the ideas, people, and places shaping culture — and help you close the gap between who you are and how you live.

So, let’s get into it.

What's Worth Your Attention

The Fragrance

Scent is one of the most underrated tools of self-expression — it shapes how you show up before you say a word. Brands like Phlur treat fragrance as an extension of personal style, building scents like Father Figure around a persona rather than a note. Like fashion, fragrance evokes mood — and the notes you gravitate toward say something about how you want to be perceived.

A quick primer on scent families:

• Floral — romantic, feminine, classic. Rose, jasmine, peony. Reads as soft and approachable. (Chanel Chance lives here.)

• Woody — grounded, warm, confident. Sandalwood, cedar, vetiver. Reads as quietly powerful. (YSL Libre, with its lavender-cedar core.)

• Musky / Amber — sensual, intimate, lingering. Amber, musk, vanilla. Reads as magnetic. (Chanel Coco Noir and Phlur Father Figure both play here.)

• Citrus / Fresh — energetic, clean, modern. Bergamot, neroli, grapefruit. Reads as effortless.

• Oriental / Spicy — bold, complex, evening-coded. Incense, cardamom, oud. Reads as deliberate.

The self-defined woman doesn’t pick one lane — she has a wardrobe of scents, the way she has a wardrobe of clothes.

What I’m wearing this season:

• Chanel Chance — light, fresh, quietly empowering

• Chanel Coco Noir — sultry, flirtatious, a date-night signature

• Phlur Father Figure — sensual, modern, magnetic

• YSL Libre — confident, grounded, signature-worthy

The Spring Edit

There’s an “anti-trend” trend in the air — essentially, a return to basics. I’m taking it further: basics, elevated through accessories that carry personality.

The Muse

Alex Eagle, Creative Director.

Alex Eagle is the kind of creative director whose work refuses to sit in one category. Her shop, her interiors, her personal style, her curated objects — they all speak the same language. She's built a world where fashion, home, and lifestyle aren't separate departments but expressions of one coherent point of view. That's what makes her worth studying: not any single piece she puts out, but the consistency of taste across all of them.

The Idea

Modernism as a mindset.

“You’re a collector,” Alex Eagle observes in a recent Vogue piece, framing modernism as “a mindset” and style as “thoughtful accumulation.”

Modern Socialites was built on the same foundation. My work is to simplify and curate with intention, so that self-defined women can build a lifestyle at the intersection of identity and expression. I’m redefining what it means to be a socialite today.

The piece captures something I believe deeply: style, objects, and spaces are interconnected. They shape one another. And they shape you.

From the salon,

— Sabina