This Is It

“It’s not about you, Candy, it’s about me.” I often heard those words throughout my upbringing as a young Puerto Rican girl on the Upper West Side. Especially in the uniformed halls of my Catholic school—all girls, mind you—that I attended for 12 years.

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I was fortunate that my parents thought I should be exposed to many cultural things, such as piano lessons and castanet classes, both of which I loved. Though I’m not sure if what I most enjoyed from those extracurriculars was the patent leather hatbox that I carried to the studio and back every Saturday. Maybe that’s what influenced my voracious desire some 20 years later to have Hermès make me a custom black patent leather Kelly bag with baby blue leather lining and a black canvas shoulder strap. (A year in the making but worth waiting for!)

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Decades from my private school days, I’ve now realized that it is indeed about me, everything. Because all of these moments—every interaction and every detail I’ve taken in—has informed who I am today. All the yous have made me me.

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After all, it was you who told me stories, you who applauded me. You who dismissed me, you who encouraged me. You sent me out there, and you believed in me.

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Through it all, I learned new hobbies and gathered new ideas. I learned to get up, leave the house, walk in a room, say, “This is it.” To dig deep, do the work. And to keep showing up in my most sincere authenticity.

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It’s you. It’s me. It’s everyone. Together, individually we give and share and bring forth a newness and potential for a connection and reconnection, a consideration and reconsideration otherwise lost.

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It’s me who loves earrings—hoops, particularly gold.

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It’s me who will always have a dog in my life.

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It’s me who loves to cook—but for many, not for one.

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It’s me who adores sequins. Let’s take the sequined Phoebe Philo T-shirt of recent note and style it with my gold Teresa Helbig trench coat and gold Vera Wang two-piece sequin outfit that I wore when I received the CFDA’s Eugenia Sheppard Award.

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It’s me who wants a fireplace instead of a terrace in a New York City apartment.

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It’s me who has two T.V.s, two iPads, and two iPhones running at all times. (Please do not tell ConEd.)

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It’s me who loves a flat or a driving shoe, and it’s me who believes in an evening shoe for the day.

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It’s me who loves flowers arranged to look like a Persian painting.

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It’s me who doesn’t drive; I love the back seat of any car, where I can rest and read.

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It’s me who wonders why I see jellyfish under cold appetizers on a Chinese menu. I would never try that.

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It’s me who loves how wine tells a story. It’s me who loves Japanese sake as a facial cleanser. It’s me who loves shopping in Morocco and the inclusiveness of the ritual. You get tea, almond cakes. You bargain, and at the very end both parties like each other. And sometimes, you leave with a friend.

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It’s me who loves churches and temples. The liturgy and the incense. I love to walk in and out of them, exploring the architecture and marveling at how immediately I feel transported to a different world.

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It’s me who loves bath oil or bath beads, especially from Santa Maria Novella. It’s like therapy or maybe it’s just a very luxe moment.

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It’s me who loves black-and-white photographs. A black-and-white tweed suit. A white mink. A black mink. A white pump and a black boot.

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It’s me who loves tents, namely a Bedouin tent like the one you see in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or like the tent in our last holiday in Marrakesh: chocolate brown with white stitching, red carpet interior, enormous. A magnificent cocktail setting.

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It’s me who has never surfed or admired big waves, but it’s me who covets a Belperron wave cuff with a diamond on it. This is my love of a wave.

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It’s me who loves Paul French’s new book, Her Lotus Years. Wallis Simpson in China, 1924, 1925. Just imagine. Don’t imagine it, go read it. It’s an amazing book.

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It’s not you, it’s me—and it’s me who looks forward to meeting you.