THE TASTE LIST · NO. 01
The Taste List No. 01: Things I Keep Reaching For
An occasional list of the things earning their place in my life.
I’ve been thinking about the difference between the things we like and the things we actually live with.
There are plenty of beautiful things I’ve admired from a distance. Things I’ve saved, considered buying, or imagined belonging to some slightly more put-together version of my life.
But then there are the things I reach for without thinking.
The dress I choose when I don’t know what to wear. The perfume I spray even when I’m staying home. The cup that somehow gets washed more often than the others because I keep using it again.
None of them are necessarily the best things I own.
They’re simply the ones that have made themselves useful, familiar, or loved.
So, I thought I’d start keeping a list.
Not a shopping list. Not quite a favorites list, either.
Just a record of the things that, lately, have been earning their place.
01. Burberry Goddess
I have other perfumes.
Some are prettier on the shelves. Some feel more appropriate for a particular evening, outfit, or version of myself.
But Goddess is the one I keep reaching for.
There’s something comforting about it. Vanilla, but not in the sugary way I used to associate with vanilla perfumes. It feels warm and put together without asking me to be particularly put together myself.
I wear it when I’m going somewhere.
I wear it when I’m working from home.
Sometimes I put it on after a shower even when the only person likely to smell it is me.
I think that’s when you know something has become yours.
You stop saving it for an occasion.
02. My 1996 Seiko Lukia
I check the time on my phone like everyone else, so technically I don’t need a watch.
And yet I notice when I leave the house without one.
There’s something I like about putting it on before I go. It’s a tiny finishing gesture, almost automatic now.
Phone. Keys. Watch.
It’s a Seiko Lukia from 1996. Thirty years old, and still keeping time.
I’ve become increasingly interested in objects like this — things that have lasted long enough that they no longer need to announce themselves.
Maybe that’s part of why I keep wearing it.
It just does its job, quietly.
03. Pink Brumate
This is perhaps the least impressive thing on this list.
It’s a pink cup.
That’s it.
But somehow, out of all the cups in the kitchen, this is the one that keeps ending up beside me.
Coffee while I work. Water in the afternoon. Something warm when I’ve been awake far too long.
I didn’t buy it thinking it would become my cup. I’m not even sure there was a moment when that happened.
It just did.
I like objects that become important this way.
Not because they were expensive or carefully chosen, but because repetition gave them meaning.
04: The Blue Dress That Requires Very Little From Me
I don’t buy clothes very often.
For a long time, shopping for clothes has been complicated by how I feel about my body. It’s difficult to enjoy clothes when getting dressed can so easily turn into an assessment of everything you wish looked different.
So, when I find something that lets me skip that conversation with myself, I notice.
There’s a particular kind of dress I keep returning to: easy, comfortable, forgiving, but still nice enough that I feel dressed.
Nothing that needs to be adjusted all day.
Nothing I’m waiting to fit differently.
Just something that works with the body I have when I put it on.
I’m beginning to think that might be one of the better definitions of personal style.
Not the clothes you imagine yourself wearing someday.
The ones you’re happy to wear now.
05: My Fujifilm X-M5
This one is new enough that I’m still learning it.
But I already know I’m going to keep reaching for it.
I bought the camera partly for Loved by Ellie, because I wanted the photographs here to feel like they came from an actual life rather than a collection of images assembled around an aesthetic.
But I’ve noticed something else happening.
I’m paying attention more.
The light on the wall.
What the apartment looks like just after it rains.
A cup left on the table.
The strange blue-grey light before the morning properly arrives.
None of these things are extraordinary.
That’s precisely why I want to photograph them.
I spend so much time thinking about what I want my life to become that I sometimes forget to look at what it already is.
The camera is making me look.
On things that earn their place
I used to think having good taste meant knowing what to choose.
The right bag. The right chair. The right perfume. The right white shirt.
I’m less interested in that version of taste now.
I think taste is also revealed by what survives your attention.
What you continue wearing after the novelty disappears.
What stays on the shelf after you stop rearranging it.
What gets scratched, washed, emptied, refilled, repaired.
What you reach for when nobody is watching.
Maybe that’s why I wanted the first Taste List to begin here.
Not with the most beautiful things I own.
Not with the things I think you should buy.
Just the things that have quietly become part of my life.
And perhaps that’s the standard I want to use more often before bringing something new into it:
Will I still reach for this when it stops feeling new?
— Ellie
A little more to linger over.
The Taste List is an occasional record of the things I find myself returning to. For more notes on taste, everyday rituals, and the quieter parts of becoming, join The Circle.
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