I was standing at the window, looking at the dress. It was strange. Almost awkward. With an asymmetric hem and a neckline that seemed to begin in a past life and end in the next. I sighed, remembering Barcelona — that summer when the wind tossed my hair, and my friend said, “You look like a woman who doesn’t explain herself.” That day I wore a simple dress made of thick linen, slightly sun-bleached. Cherry tint on the lips, a thin silk scarf on my neck like a trace of what was left unsaid. And just one earring. The second one was lost that morning, but I decided: let it be a story. Gil appeared behind me, peering at the dress like it was not a garment but a philosophical question. “Hmm, I don’t know,” she mumbled. “You should try it on. Or ask someone.” I pulled out my notebook from my bag, smiled and said, “Does Hermès ask anyone?” I went to the fitting room alone. Like a woman who doesn’t conduct surveys before falling in love. After the fitting room, we headed to a café. Talked about kids, apartments, investments in AI. I stayed quiet. Then pulled out my worn-out copy of The Luxury Strategy, found the right page, underlined with a pencil, and read aloud: “Do not test.” And added, “Because luxury is a prophecy. Not a referendum.” “But what about feedback?” asked Aline, tossing her hair back. “Feedback is for brands that don’t know who they are,” I answered, looking at my own reflection in the window glass. “And do you?” Aline leaned toward me, as if my eyes could be a screen for her answers. I paused for a second. And for the first time that day, I felt: yes. I do. I remembered a man. The one who, before every date, would ask: “Are you sure you want Japanese food?” “Will it be okay if I wear jeans?” “Tell me if anything’s wrong — I’ll adjust.” He was… perfect. And unbearable. There was no risk in him. No shape of his own. Only reaction. Like brands that use focus groups instead of creating the future. True luxury is not about being liked. It’s about offering — without asking for permission.
I remembered those sandals. The ones with the absurd bow, the unstable platform, and the price tag that made my card tremble. Aline had said: “Are you sure?” I said: “No. But I’m in.” And that night, when I walked down Broadway, people shouted: “Goddess!” “Where are those shoes from?” “You walk like you rule this city!” And that wasn’t the result of testing. It was the effect of belief. I reread: “Testing means that the decisions of the luxury brand are subject to the taste of the consumers.” And I thought: Jean-Noël, what if a woman is a brand? Then every time she asks, “Tell me what’s better,” — she loses her shape. I came home, took off the dress, hung it over the back of a chair. It was strange. And I knew — no one would’ve picked it in a vote. But tomorrow, I’ll wear it. Because true luxury isn’t consensus. It’s presence without apologies.

The class started at seven. I arrived without a partner, but with a book. Kapferer, in a worn leather sleeve, still lay at the bottom of my bag — somewhere between perfume, a lip pencil, and a useless Louvre ticket. I pulled it out, opened to a random page — and as if by chance, I heard: “Luxury brands are built on a long-term time frame… managing short-term profitability while preserving long-term desirability.” I circled the phrase with an old pencil that barely writes anymore, but I keep using it to underline things. And I thought: isn’t that exactly how we women live? We build ourselves for years ahead. But we must be desirable — every single day. Even when our stomach aches, even when we don’t feel like talking. Even after we’ve just cried. Or the opposite — when we’re so happy we don’t fit inside the frame. Still: be desirable. And at the same time — profitable. My partner turned out to be surprisingly young. There was something soft and steely in him at once. He held my back like he already knew how it needed to align, and his touch wasn’t a touch — it was an offer. I felt ashamed. Not because of the closeness — but because of how long it had been since I’d felt in sync with someone’s rhythm. Tango is about listening. Not to the music. To the other. His spine. His pauses. His softness. And everything he won’t say, but that still speaks. I could hear his palm tremble. How he lightly squeezed my fingers when stepping forward. How his breath shifted when I guessed the move. And at some point — I realized that the body, too, is rhetoric. Not a body for the sake of body. A body as a statement. As a letter. As a brand built over years but sold in three seconds. The first glance. The first step. The first dance. I remembered my first Dior bag. Not because it was expensive — but because I didn’t know how to carry it. I slouched, I held it tight, I was embarrassed. I didn’t feel worthy. And one day, my then-lover said: “You have to carry it like it’s an extension of you. Not something you’re hiding.” Tango is the same. If you carry yourself like a mistake, you won’t land. But if you dance yourself — you’ll be remembered. I stepped back. Then forward. Then sideways. And suddenly — I wasn’t thinking. I was just being. And my partner — was no longer a stranger. We didn’t ask each other anything. But we said everything. Through pauses. Through the weight of a hip. Through a gaze that demanded no reply. That was luxury. Not the dress. Not the lesson’s price. But the fact that I was seen — and I was seeing. Without voice. Without a post. Without validation. And I thought: Kapferer, what if brands aren’t objects? What if they’re relationships? Maybe a luxury brand preserves its desirability not because it’s rare — but because it’s recognizable. Like a touch. Like an intonation. Like a dance. We danced for twenty minutes. I don’t remember a single step. But I remember how he held my hand at the very end. And how long we stood there before letting go. After class, I stepped outside. It was warm, but not hot. The wind touched my cheeks like wine touches the tongue. The streets felt washed, fresh — like after tears. On the corner, someone was selling roses. Red, like lips in a bad film. I bought one — just because. Not for anyone. For myself. I walked slowly. Didn’t feel like talking. Didn’t even feel like thinking. Just walking, as if my body was still dancing and my thoughts were lagging behind. Kapferer’s book was in my hands again. I opened it to the same page. Still about desirability. About time. About profit. And suddenly, I felt a sting: what if I am a brand too? My style. My voice. My fears. My desires. And the way I come back — after defeats, after broken heels, after betrayals. What if my soul is a long-term strategy too? We earn short-term profits sometimes, don’t we? Relationships we don’t want to be in. Roles that exhaust us. Masks we’ve long wanted to take off. We play the “good girl” for approval. We settle for less — just so we’re not alone. But inside, the same question keeps burning: what will be left when all this has been consumed?I remembered a friend who once told me how she left her husband. She didn’t cry. She was ironing his shirt when it hit her: “I don’t want to be this woman. Even if it’s comfortable.” She didn’t scream. She didn’t make a scene. She just packed a suitcase. And later she told me: “I thought I was dying. But it turned out — it was a renaissance.” And brands — they die too. And are born again. Like women. Like desires.
I sat on a bench by the square. My overnight bag at my feet. The rose — on my knees. People passed by. Couples. Students. Someone carrying a cake. Someone — a parrot in a cage. And I suddenly realized that in that moment — I needed nothing. Not love. Not an object. Not a text. Just to be. And maybe that’s how true luxury is measured: in the ability not to strive. Just to stand. To listen. To be — and to know that you are worthy. Not because you have something. But because you are. I pulled out my old pencil. Underlined the word “desirability” in Kapferer’s book. And wrote in the margin: “I am desirable not because I perform, but because I remain.” And maybe — that is my most honest brand.

I arrived in Saint Petersburg under a snowfall that felt ancient, as if it were supposed to fall slowly so as not to disturb the frame. Everything here seemed part of a set design—even the driver who met me by the Moika looked like a character from Chekhov, with eyes reflecting the treads of war and the brake lights of an empire. I stayed in a room with a balcony over the Neva, in a hotel that smelled of parquet lacquer, chokeberry tincture, and powder someone had sprinkled into the air in 1983 and never cleared away. It was chilly, as it should be in a city where even candelabras stand their ground stubbornly—like ideas no one has managed to cancel. I pulled out my worn copy of Kapferer, from which fell an old bookmark—a scrap of paper with a phone number scribbled on the back of a boarding pass from Zurich. I think it belonged to a jeweler who once told me on a flight that there would be no more diamonds. I smirked and, as always, took a pencil out of the Chanel lipstick case—the same one that smells of vanilla and crumbs of longing. I underlined the sentence: “For a concert pianist, the money received for playing is not enough. What the pianist also wants (and even wants above all if the person is a true artist) is the public’s applause.” And I thought: what about a writer? The kind who lives in New York, in a house where the fireplace sometimes burns not letters, but ideas that didn’t survive the morning light? Sometimes it feels like I’m performing too. My stories are solo piano pieces, and each time I walk onto a stage where the audience doesn’t applaud—but scrolls. Where ovations are replaced by reactions. Where every like is like a dry cough from the back row. And yet I go on. I write like a pianist plays: even if the keys have lost their varnish and the hall is full of ghosts.
I went to the Hermitage the next morning. It was Friday, and the city was wet with melted decadence. My boots clattered on the pavement, and I suddenly remembered a man in Paris who said you could tell by the sound of a woman’s heels whether she was walking toward art—or away from it. I said nothing then, because I didn’t know the answer. Now—I do. I was walking toward it. In the Hermitage courtyard it smelled of stone dust and a hint of marmalade—perhaps an illusion, but I like when museums smell like childhood. I ascended the grand staircase slowly, as if climbing not steps, but notes. Inhale, exhale. Inhale—Rembrandt. Exhale—Velázquez. Everything was too real to breathe fast. I found myself in a portrait hall. One of the portraits—a male one, strict, measured—stopped me. I didn’t remember the artist’s name, but the man’s gaze was the same as my first editor’s: he looked at you like a text that isn’t ready yet, but might become a masterpiece. And I stood before him like a pianist before a score: slightly guilty, slightly defiant. And very alone. In that moment I understood: it doesn’t matter how much you earn from a book. It doesn’t matter if the rights were bought in Japan. It doesn’t matter how many times your text was quoted in magazines no one finishes. What matters is that someone—even just one person—stands in front of your portrait and feels that strange blend of reverence and aching closeness. What matters is that someone, having read your story, suddenly remembers the smell of their grandmother’s bedroom or the sound of that one kiss in a kitchen in April. That’s applause.
I sat on a bench, placed Kapferer beside me, and pulled out a notebook. Not for notes this time, but to give myself permission to just be a viewer. I watched women pass the paintings—in furs, on phones, with children on leashes. Some paused, froze, took pictures. But there was one—with grey hair and a navy scarf—who didn’t photograph anything. She just looked. And in her gaze I saw the silent ovation Kapferer once wrote about. Later, at a café across from the museum, I ordered coffee and gooseberry tart. At the next table sat an old man with an accent, leafing through a newspaper and muttering: “It’s not about the price… it’s about the silence after the purchase…” —and I didn’t know whether he meant money or love. I thought: maybe everything in my life is a sentence from Kapferer. I don’t sell a text—I sell the experience: the path to it, the way it’s read, the shadow it leaves behind. On the way back to the hotel, I passed a bookstall. A woman was flipping through postcards. I imagined someone someday flipping through my stories the same way—as postcards from cities they’ve never been to, but feel in their skin.
In the room I lit a candle and opened the book again. Kapferer, as always, was beside me. On the cover—a pencil mark, in the margins—a teardrop from the Rome airport. I wrote:
“Today I stood in a hall full of art and for the first time felt like part of something eternal. Not because I am talented. But because I know how to feel. And to share that feeling.”
And maybe, just maybe, that’s what applause really is. I hadn’t noticed how the snow outside had started falling again—not the kind for postcards, but the kind that drifts down in weary flakes, like memories you’re no longer sure about. I think I’d been sitting in that armchair—by the window, across from the fireplace grate—for hours. My shadow remained in the Hermitage: watching, absorbing, leaving a faint trail of perfume in the air—a mix of tobacco, cedar, and book. I don’t know exactly where I learned to leave scent where a thought once was. Maybe it’s just a style. On the nightstand lay three things: my phone, with notifications turned off; an old issue of Numéro, bookmarked with a napkin from Café de Flore; and Kapferer’s book, its spine worn and stained with cherry sauce from Madrid. I always carry it with me. I don’t know where my diary ends and The Luxury Strategy begins. Sometimes I feel like I live as a footnote in his book: “see also page 83, if you want to understand why you’re still in this industry.”
I remembered a moment from the Hermitage—when a child, maybe six years old, suddenly stopped in front of Catherine the Great’s portrait and said: “That grandma was important, right?” His mother laughed. I didn’t. I thought: what about me? Will I ever be on a portrait someone stops in front of and understands that to be important doesn’t mean to be famous? It means to be heard. Even if your voice is in a book no one finished reading. I know women who buy €10,000 handbags but are afraid to ask for a raise. And I know those who live in one-room flats facing construction sites but look at themselves in the mirror like icons. That too—is luxury. Luxury as inner verticality. As the posture you maintain even when walking in heels over February ice. I stepped out for a walk. Nevsky Avenue was full of headlights, and each car looked like a candle flame on a birthday cake that no one celebrates. In the bookstore window I saw my reflection—ankle-length coat, cashmere scarf, a gaze carrying the phrase: “don’t rush yourself.” I went inside, and the elderly bookseller asked, “Can I help you with anything? “Yes,” I said, “can you tell me how to stop doubting that I’ve earned my applause?”
He smiled the way only people can who have lived through both gourmet shops and grand operas. On the shelf stood a book titled The Art of Being No One. I thought: isn’t that, in essence, real freedom? When you could be anyone—but choose to be yourself. Even if yourself means a woman who writes pieces that are only read at night. A woman whose bag holds a plane ticket to Tbilisi, a perfume with a heliotrope note, and an old letter from her mother that says: “You’ve always known how to stay whole. When I returned to the hotel, the door to my room looked taller than it had in the morning. I felt that I had become heavier today—by a few grams. A few grams of light that stayed in me after the gaze of that woman in the gallery. A few grams of pride for not cutting out the hardest parts of the text. A few grams of guilt—for still thinking about him, the man from Montreux, who once said to me: “You want love, but you want to be paid for it.” I laughed then. But now—I understand. Maybe he was right. Maybe we all want applause, but only a few are honest enough to admit it.
Before bed, I opened Kapferer again. This time—a page where he writes about brand power. About how a brand shouldn’t respond to demand, but shape it. And I wrote in my notebook: “What if I’m a brand too? But not a product. A resonance. I don’t sell myself. I resonate. If someone hears me—they’ve bought me. The rest—just passed by.”
That was my last night in Saint Petersburg. In the morning—a flight to Zurich, then back to New York, to my townhouse. There, a room waits for me where everything is arranged like a score: fireplace, books, a hat stand, a window overlooking a park where April is already blooming. But now—it’s February. And I’m here. Alone. With the silence echoing with halls, portraits, and a single sentence: “Applause is a currency too. But not everyone knows how to cash it in.”

The morning didn't begin—it woke up. Slowly, like silk gliding over a bare shoulder. I stepped out of the ryokan in slippers, wrapped in a cotton kimono—white as the steam rising from a teacup. In this city, even the air is drunk differently: it is warm, humid, with a taste of rice paper, brewed herbs, and something that cannot be translated. Only inhaled. My path led toward Sanjusangendo—but I turned off along the way. The alley beckoned me like a temptation: it smelled of cedar and rain. I walked slowly, very slowly—you can’t do otherwise here. Kyoto holds a pace; it is like an old teacher: if you rush, you lose the meaning. A wooden plaque with hieroglyphs hung on a gate. I didn't understand what was written there, but a woman in a gray yukata bowed to me and gestured for me to enter. I nodded. Inside, everything was air. A silence woven from footsteps, as if from threads. Light—like rice dust, suspended in space. The floors were wooden, warm. The tatami gave way under my feet, like a breath. The room was almost empty—all attention was drawn to the woman sitting by the hearth. She was not young—and this made her beauty absolute. Her bangs were slightly disheveled. Her lips—dry. On her wrist—a thin bracelet, black silk. She wasn't watching—she was feeling. Every movement was a mathematics of silence. She brought water, placed a pinch of green powder into a bowl. And all—in silence. No speech. No explanations. Only ritual. Only form. And in that—absolute grammar. I suddenly remembered a phrase from Kapferer: “Luxury is the enemy of equality. It functions as a fence.” Luxury is not a brand. It is the form itself. A form that says without words: you belong—or you don't. You understand this code—or you stand behind the fence. I didn't feel excluded—but I felt how the space set boundaries. There was a woman next to me, a Japanese woman, with perfect hands that bore no rings. Her hair was gathered in a smooth bun. On the hem of her kimono, a single hieroglyph was embroidered. She was part of this world. I was a guest. And it wasn’t painful. It was... subtle. The ceremony continued. There were five of us. We sat in seiza position. My knees began to ache. I endured. There was discipline in this, too. The woman placed a bowl in front of me. The matcha was thick, like jade. I took it with both hands, bowed to the bowl, and only then—lifted it to my lips. The taste—bitter, warm, enveloping. It was as if I were swallowing time. I felt how it became quiet inside. How everything external disappeared. How I was—not a client. And not a guest. But simply a person, stripped bare to the essence. Luxury is not when they give you a menu. It's when you know how to hold a bowl. And why it’s important. This is the code. This is the ritual. This is a hierarchy in which there is no offense. Only respect. I sat, watching the woman's hands. They moved like water. And suddenly—I felt: I was home. Not because I belonged. But because I knew how to—observe. In the evening, after the ceremony, the hostess led me to the garden. The light was leaving the sky, like silk from shoulders. It didn't fall—it retreated with dignity, with that Japanese dignity that doesn't need applause. The stones in the garden were slightly damp from the morning dew, but already warm to the touch. We walked slowly, between the pines, between the lines of an invisible poem that the earth itself was writing. The hostess's name was Kazuko. Her face was like washi paper: with its veins, its softness, its light. When she walked, her kimono sang. It didn't rustle—it sang, as if the fabric knew the music of the ritual. She spoke softly, with pauses that were not silence—they were meaning. "Everyone asks about the tea," she said. "But the tea doesn't make the ceremony." "What does?" I asked. "The gesture." We stopped. A pine branch bent as if it knew it would be part of a frame. I saw myself from a distance—in the light of the lantern, in a linen dress, barefoot, with specks of green on my ankles. I remembered: this morning I worried that my dress was wrinkled from the suitcase. Now it wasn't wrinkled—it was alive. “People think luxury is possession,” I said. “But true luxury is belonging. To a moment. To yourself.” Kazuko nodded, as if I had repeated a truth long known to her. I took out Kapferer. “Luxury is the enemy of equality. It functions as a fence.” I quietly read the phrase aloud. Kazuko listened to the English words, as if to a foreign melody. “In Kyoto,” she said, “we don’t invite people into the garden. We receive them.” I smiled. This was the fence. But not as a barrier, but as a threshold between noise and presence. We sat on a bench by the lantern. The light fell on her hands. She held the bowl as if it were a drop of the world that must not be spilled. I looked at her wrists—thin. I thought: I am not a name. I am not a status. I am not a handbag. I am a gesture. I am attention. I am presence. In the morning, the city was almost soundless. Even the birds sang more quietly—as if they knew that in Kyoto, sound weighs more than anywhere else. I left the teahouse, pressing the thin fabric of my dress to my chest with my palm. It still held the scent of smoke and water. The roads were not empty—they were careful. An old man watered the moss at the entrance to his shop, a small boy walked to school with a satchel bigger than his own body, and a woman in a peach kimono slowly carried a mat onto her balcony. I walked past them, not as a tourist—as a shadow, an echo. A Kyoto morning doesn't belong to you—you belong to it. In a teashop on the corner, a young girl in a uniform met me—perfect, as if ironed with the steam of attention. I asked for matcha. She nodded, not like a waitress, but like a guardian. “Hot?” she asked. “Warm,” I replied. A minute later, I was sitting on the veranda, looking at the street and drinking. The matcha was thick, like a ritual. It wasn’t a beverage. It was a gesture. I held the bowl with both hands, as one holds one's breath before a confession. I took a sip—the taste was tart, earthy, as if the planet itself was speaking to me in the language of greens. Next to me stood a stone basin—water dripped from it. Drip… drip… drip… Slowly. Not for utility. For presence. I took out Kapferer. I turned the book to the place where I had placed yesterday’s dried twig. The phrase was the same: “Luxury is the enemy of equality. It functions as a fence.” I read it again—and this time I understood: a fence is not always about arrogance. Sometimes it's a way to preserve a rhythm. Sometimes—a way to say: “Here—there is silence. Here—you cannot rush. Here—you are not a client. You are a witness.” I saw myself in the glass—in the reflection I was not fashionable. I was calm. Pure. Structured. And in that reflection I saw: I am not comparing. I am not rushing. I am unfolding, like matcha. Only in silence. Only in the hands of those who know how to wait. I ran my finger along the rim of the bowl. Then along my lips. And I smiled. Inside, it was quiet. And that means—it was luxurious.

The office of the company that "teaches" homes and cities to think was on an old embankment: Victorian warehouse bricks, glass inserts, steel stairs—as if a port crane had one day decided to become a museum of the future. Inside, there were dark green walls in the meeting rooms, soft graphite carpets, and glossy whiteboards; in the kitchen, chrome faucets gleamed, packs of specialty coffee stood nearby, and in the refrigerator, there was almond milk and a sign that read, "please don't steal yogurts" (the smiley was covered with a strip of masking tape; someone had good boundaries). The open floor plan rustled with quiet keyboards and light sneakers. Girls in butter-colored knit vests, guys in hoodies that cost more than my first coat (and looked like they cost four dollars). I arrived on time—in a black jacket with a sharp shoulder line, a white T-shirt, loose gray trousers, patent leather loafers; my hair was pulled back with a black, minimalist clip, and on my lips was a sheer Hermes tint in a shade that makeup artists call "your own, but better" (my version of modesty). In my bag—Kapferer's book and an old pencil in a worn leather Chanel case: my portable scalpel for meanings. "We're glad you made it," said our visit's curator, Felix, who was tall and wore clear-framed glasses. Next to him were Maya, a machine learning expert in an unlined sage blazer; and Arun, a storage specialist in a white T-shirt and vintage jeans, with an old steel watch on his wrist, as honest as engineering documentation. We sat in a meeting room, the glass on both sides making our conversation part of the interior (and I caught myself in the familiar thought: transparency is a good trick as long as you choose what's visible). "Tell me," I asked. "What are you actually building? Not in a dictionary, but in life." "We're building models that guess patterns in chaos," Maya said. "And a couple of times a week, chaos guesses us," Felix added, and I put a little mental checkmark next to "humor is in order." "But honestly?" I leaned forward. "Are you teaching machines the hospital average—or the exception?" "Statistics like the average," Felix replied. "But we add architectures that see the edges. And also—human post-editing. Without it, everything turns into a poster." "So you have a workshop for producing averaged courage here, carefully validated by people?" I couldn't resist. (It was a joke, but with a knife.) "We'd say: a tool to speed up the experiment," Maya smiled. "And where is the place for what can't be explained?" I asked. "If the system doesn't know what to do with it, it assigns a low confidence," Arun interjected. "And calls us." "So, you're still making the truly expensive decisions," I said, and the room grew a little quieter. My book lay on the table in front of us. I opened it, found the bookmark I had placed there earlier, and moved it toward me. I drew a line with the wooden lead under Kapferer's phrase about "many new doors"—without shaking, just as you would guide a stitch over a complex dart in a studio. If you believe him, extensions are entrances to a brand's universe. I looked at the people in the room and realized: AI is also a brand extension. Only the brand here becomes the person. After the first round of questions, we walked through the floor. Projectors shone grids and heat maps on the walls; in one corner—a "failed hypotheses club" on a magnetic board, each card with a date and a lesson, without shame or a carnival atmosphere (I love that kind of honesty—it smells of fresh paint and self-respect). In another meeting room, interface designers were arguing about how a model's "signature" should look in a product: as a quiet legend or as a proud label. I stopped by the window: it was raining outside, big, confident drops; on the glass, the drops drew tracks, as if they were turning gradients into visible trajectories. "Do you believe that machines can be trusted with taste?" I asked Maya as we waited for the elevator. "Machines can be trusted with sorting. Taste is when you know what you won't show," she replied without a pause. I made a note of that phrase with my pencil directly on my hand (yes, I do that when my notebook is in my bag and I don't want to break the moment). For lunch, we went to a small bistro around the corner, with green panels and cream tiles, where someone had polished every fork to a mirror shine (you can always tell people by their forks). We had a salad with figs and brie, fish with fennel, sparkling water; Felix drank espresso before eating (a bold move), Maya had a matcha latte (bubbly grass, but it suited her), Arun had unsweetened tea, like old engineers at six in the morning. "I've always been interested in one question," I said, leaning in so the kitchen noise wouldn't take our thought away. "You create tools that accelerate mass communication. But Kapferer writes that excessive communication kills luxury. It turns out you're building a world where everything is faster. But luxury requires slowness. How do you live with that?" "With ballast," Felix said. "We try to separate the speed of delivery from the speed of meaning," Maya said. "Our processes are fast. But we don't speed up decisions where identity is important. A person must remain there. And silence." "So you recognize zones where a machine won't go?" I clarified. "It will go," Arun interjected, "but we don't have to let it in. There's a difference between 'can' and 'should'." I smiled: I like people who have the word "should" in their lexicon without fanaticism or hashtags. "Good," I placed my book on the table. "Then a question about taste and exception. The algorithm collects the world into an average. Luxury, on the contrary, builds a temple to the exception. What will you do when your tool begins to gently convince clients 'to be like everyone else' more convincingly than any marketer?" "We will remind them that the median does not write symphonies," Felix said. "And build interfaces where the exception is a first-class passenger. Expensive decisions must have a separate passage." "Like in old theaters," Maya said. (I love it when metaphors match the person's shoes: she had soft suede loafers that don't like crowds.) After lunch, we returned to the office, and I asked to be shown the "room of doubts"—if there was one. Maya led me to a small laboratory with dim lighting, where there were two computers and a cork wall with printouts: strange recognition artifacts, facial shadows, broken letters, frames where everything was "almost clear." Next to it—a notebook with neat handwriting: "Uncertain → ask. Certain → still show someone else." "This is our mandatory warm-up," Maya said. "The algorithm gets stuck in its rightness—and so do we. Doubt is our regular update." "Sounds like good skincare," I replied. (Doubt as a serum—a couple of drops in the morning, a couple in the evening.) In the evening, I was driven home. At home—that is, in New York, on Gramercy—the night always smells of electricity and wood. I brewed jasmine tea in a thin-walled white cup, laid out documents and my notebook on the table, and opened the book. I drew a second, thinner line with the pencil under the same phrase—"many new doors." And I wrote next to it: "AI is not a door. It's a corridor that connects doors. It's important that the rarest ones have a key." (Yes, sometimes my formulas sound like house rules. They are the house rules.) In the morning, a black SUV picked me up: we were expected at the data center, forty minutes from the city. On the way, I looked out the window—at the warehouses, the solar panel farms, the pragmatism of the landscape that feeds the romance of the screen. At the entrance, I was met by the site manager, a woman named Emily, with a strict ponytail, a vest with pockets, and a confident stride. "It's noisy and cold here," she said. "That's normal. That's how the brain works faster." It was a stock joke, but her voice had the metallic sound of a person who knows how to turn the world off and on. We went through the turnstiles, put on turquoise shoe covers, and I was offered an anti-static wristband (I declined—I'm a guest, not a surgeon). The door with a key card opened, and we were enveloped in noise: thousands of small fans singing their industrial mantra. Rows of racks—black, neat, with blinking green and blue indicators; hot and cold aisles; above—cable trays, like neatly braided hair. The air smelled of cold and a light ozone freshness—the scent of responsible spaces. "Is this where your models learn?" I asked, and Arun nodded: "This is where they sleep, run, forget, and remember." I tried to imagine how emotions turn into matrices, and our taste—into weights. "We have a rule," Emily said. "If the system behaves strangely, we first look for a physical reason: a broken wire, overheating, power. Mysticism—after the electricity." I liked myself for nodding too seriously—sometimes you have to let the world know you're on its side. We stopped at a rack where a load graph was blinking on a display. "In moments like this, I think about price," I said, shouting over the noise. "Kapferer wrote that in luxury, the price is part of the product. It seems that in technology, it's the opposite: everything should strive to be free. How do you live at this intersection?" "We pay with the machine for what the person gets for free," Arun replied. "But the person still pays the bill." "And that's where luxury begins," Maya added. "Choosing what is even worth counting. That's our most expensive decision." We walked down the cold aisle to the end, and there, behind a transparent door, was a small break room for the staff—with a hard sofa, a coffee machine, and a poster that read "Think like a steward." I lingered by the poster. "Steward" is a good word. Not "owner," not "god," but someone who is responsible for the route and the people. I opened the book, put a tiny dot with my pencil next to my yesterday's note, and thought: perhaps the main luxury is not the algorithm, but the person with the right to say "stop." On the way back, we barely spoke: the noise of the data center had burned the hustle out of us. In the car, I ran my fingers over the spine of the book, like you sometimes touch a scar: a reminder that perfection requires care. In the city, I stopped at a small bookstore on the corner—I bought a thin Smythson "Observations" notebook in dark blue leather (sometimes a thing is needed just to hold exactly one thought). In the evening, I sat down at my desk and began to write an article—not about technology, but about the people who stand guard over that technology. A couple of quotes from Maya, one from Emily, a tiny remark from Felix about the median and symphonies. And my format: short questions, long answers, a few parenthetical footnotes—"taste begins with what you won't show," "the exception must have a separate entrance," "a corridor is not a door." I remembered Kapferer's phrase about new doors and understood why it's so provocative (and, honestly, why I underlined it twice today). In a world where everything "extends" into everything, luxury is about returning some doors to an "by appointment" mode. Let there be thousands of entrances to the average. But let there be at least one—to the exception—where the doorbell is quiet, where robots don't open the door, where they ask only one question: "Are you really here for this?" That night, I didn't turn off my desk lamp for a long time. The tea grew cold, the graphite crumbled slightly on the margins, and my fingers were gray, as if I had been holding a shadow. I took that worn Chanel case out of my bag, placed it next to the book, and smiled to myself: who would have thought that the most relevant conversation about the future would be led by a wooden pencil. But that's how it turned out. Maybe because luxury is not what does everything for you, but what gives you the right to do it yourself: to underline, to doubt, to ask questions, to demand silence. And—to open or close doors.

A Tanzanian evening gathers people into a circle with the same confidence a master uses to gather fabric into a soft drape: without fuss and with respect for the rhythm. The bonfire crackles economically—only the necessary sounds, not a single extra spark for effect (fire, honestly, is the best art director). Scents layer themselves: dry grass, milk "one second before it boils over" (yes, that exact moment), the warm dust of the road, and the sweet skin of a date on your fingers. Women sit in a semicircle; each has her palette: an enameled bowl of beads, a spool of thread, small scissors with rounded tips, and a laughter that keeps time better than any metronome. I sit down and lay out my constant companions: my Kapferer book and the worn leather Chanel lipstick case with my pencil. A short click—my small gong: "the stage is open." I open the chapter on memory and the "souvenir-object" and draw a graphite line under "the memory remains strong and can easily be recalled" (straight, without fuss, like a hem that no one will see but everyone will feel in the way they walk). A second, thinner stroke goes under "offer the client a souvenir-object." The case clicks again, the book remains open—let the wind turn the pages as it wishes (the night has good editorial skills, I don't argue). I'm given a thread the color of the night itself and a handful of beads: milky white, amber, azure, and those red ones that look like a period in a good sentence. My first rows are too obedient, like a straight-A student in her first dance class: everything is correct and completely uninteresting. The woman opposite, who has a bracelet on her wrist with tiny white "teeth," takes my fingers and moves them half a centimeter higher. "Don't pull—ask," her hands say (without words, but it's clear). I try again—and I hear with my fingertips: the beads don't fall, they settle into their places. The fire shifts and throws a spark onto the edge of the page. A reddish dot—a tiny "approved by the evening" stamp—remains in the margin. I blow the ash away and smile (expert authentication from the fire—why not). A song begins without announcement—one woman raises a note, a second one picks it up lower, a third adds her shoulders, and suddenly every movement has a shadow. The clicking of beads against a nail is the sound of tiny agreements. Someone, without looking, spills another handful of amber into my palm—"for the pauses" (I love how in this circle, pauses are considered an ingredient, not a flaw). I fall into the rhythm—and then the first sharp turn happens: my neighbor's bowl tips, the beads scatter across the grass, and the night turns into a starry sky, only in reverse. We silently crawl to gather them (yes, dresses can be made for grass, not for carpets), laughter works like a lantern—everything finds its place faster. A small dog lies down nearby and growls at a particularly stubborn red bead—he's a bit of a rhythm critic, I make a mental note. When we return the beads to the bowl, one of the women, the one who sings low, changes the melody, and on that descent, a long meteor passes over the savanna—not a theatrical lightning bolt, but a quiet, stubborn trail. A pause arises on its own, like a breath; the bonfire looks at the sky, we look at each other. (Jean-Noël, here's an "enigmatic message" for you: not deciphered immediately, but works instantly.) I am treated to sweet tea. Sugar dissolves faster than any trend becomes obsolete, and there is a merciless truth in this thought: memory works on temperature, not on hype. I take a sip and return to the thread. Moving more slowly (my favorite luxury—pace), I catch a micro-defect: the knot hides its tail too short and tries to come undone. The older woman, who has a mole on her cheek the size of a bead, hooks the little tail with her nail—just barely—and nods: "Like this." "Leave the trace of the repair visible," she whispers. I smile: it seems to me this is a law that should replace half of all presentations—"the trace of a repair as part of the design" (yes, designers, are you listening?). They hand me a handful of red ones—"for the road"—and for the first time this evening, I allow the pattern to deviate from the "correct" one. I place a red bead not in the center, but half a step to the left, where the eye will want to return. The bracelet immediately finds a voice. The wind turns my book to the next page (that's how the evening pretends to be an editor). I hold the spread down with my palm and place a tiny diagonal dot next to the first stroke—my sign for "it matches." The night works on the senses more carefully than any boutique: the skin is warmer, the hearing is wider, the gaze is more honest; it feels like a slogan is about to appear, but no—a pattern appears instead. The second unexpected turn comes from someone else's hand: a little girl who had only been humming before, silently changes the order of my last three beads—a white one between two blue ones—and the pattern suddenly straightens, as if it has been given its breath back. "Why like that?" I ask with my eyes. She smiles: "So you remember." (Here it is, the "souvenir-object" without a store: a gesture as a memory.) I lift the bracelet to eye level—it is already looking at me, not at the thread, and I catch myself doing my usual check, but in a new formula: my shoulders have lowered by half an inch on their own—that's enough of an argument. A little later, minor drama number three happens: a thin, dry twig falls into the fire, sparks leap up, and one lands exactly on my red bead—the one that was "to the left of center." It crackles like caramel (I hear it and laugh), doesn't get ruined, but only gets a shade warmer. "Now it's truly yours," says the woman with the mole. Sometimes chance is better than any personalization. The song continues—it becomes almost conversational, and I finally understand what note I want to leave in the margin. I take out my pencil (yes, I hold it tightly, Paris taught me not to make a thriller out of it), draw a second thin stroke under the same phrase, and write a short note: "souvenir-object: a knot + hands, not a receipt." The case clicks—my small applause for the scene—and I get back to work. On the horizon, where the grass lowers its voice, a short laugh flashes—is it a jackal, or the night recognizing itself? Someone takes out a small drum; the beat is soft, like a pillow for the lower back—it doesn't set the rhythm, it relieves a spasm. And then an old woman in a bright headscarf does something I haven't seen in any manual: she weaves one bead "out of pattern" into my design—half a step to the left of the correct left. "So it can be found when it's lost," she says. I nod too quickly (yes, I understand without translation): a design should leave a pocket for an accidental find, otherwise there's nowhere for memory to park. In scents, it's called air; in text, it's a margin; today, it's a red dot out of line. We laugh because it suddenly becomes clear why we are sitting by the fire at all: not for a bracelet (bracelets can be bought), but for the feeling of being "half a degree quieter inside." I love this quiet calibration—without pomp or reports. The bracelet is almost ready, and then the climax arises—not dramatic, but of labor: the knot on the clasp is stubborn and doesn't want to lie beautifully. I try, I pull (yes, the old habit of "by force")—it turns out crude. The woman with the white "teeth" takes my fingers and shows me that same micro-movement: "don't pull—ask." I repeat it—and hear my favorite micro-sound: a short "click" of agreement (not metal, but agreement). The knot becomes kind. Kind knots hold better than angry ones—a fact that, for some reason, isn't included in instructions. I look at the book again—the wind has quieted, the pages lie like a dress "after the second fitting." I place a tiny diagonal dot next to the double underline (my system: first—"understood," second—"experienced," third—"embodied"). And I write in the margins in parentheses (I love parentheses, they're more honest than headlines): "Memory is not an archive; it's living muscle. Exercise it with ritual." My ritual is simple: open the case, click, draw a line, sing one verse, tie one knot. This is enough for the evening to remain not "somewhere out there," but "within me." A plate of dried fruit returns to the circle, the girl pushes it toward me—the metal plate jingles like thin laughter. I take one dark slice and leave another on the plate on purpose (yes, I love small "no's" as a reminder of choice). The old woman looks at my bracelet and says very quietly: "Now you will be visible in the dark." This is the best formula of the evening: not "expensive," not "rare," not "unique," but "visible in the dark"—which means, heard by hands. We say goodbye the way women do in all countries: someone straightens my pattern, someone hides the knot's tail inside, someone puts the bracelet on me over my sleeve (the arbiter of elegance is always the sleeve, not bare skin). I thank her with a short nod—words are clumsy here, gestures are smart. The book goes into my bag, the pencil into its case (click), the bracelet on my wrist. And here is my final, calm, precise conclusion for today: luxury is when memory lives in a gesture, not in an invoice; when an object knows how to sing your melody in the dark, even if you've forgotten the words.

That evening, Paris operated on muted frequencies: in the alleys between Rivoli and Cambon, the asphalt gleamed as if polished not by rain, but by anticipation; the shop windows didn't flash — they breathed; and the slightly open windows of old homes let out the same urban chord—warm air, a time-worn wardrobe, a hint of powder, someone's piano that had played exactly three notes and then retreated. I walked to 31 Rue Cambon—yes, to the place where the mirrored staircase has for years taught people to look at themselves and not make mistakes in their conclusions. The staircase acted as a silent editor of Paris: it never wrote a single word but knew exactly where to place the pauses. The door, the carpet, the whisper of the guards, a greeting without a name (in these places, they recognize you by your walk), and I was inside the hallway that smelled of talc, a warm lightbulb, and time itself. Along the wall, racks with white covers were arranged like the paragraphs of a still-unpublished law on beauty. Behind the scenes, the movement resembled a well-mannered storm: models in robes and white socks measured their steps like geometers, makeup artists touched cheekbones with the precision and economy of judges choosing their words. Tailor's chalk lay in a line—white, like pronounced decisions; pins gleamed glossily in a magnetic dish—the only sounds here allowed to be sharp. Somewhere nearby, zippers clicked, and the sound reminded me of an international gesture of agreement: "it fits." A girl with a very slender neck tightened the belt on her trench coat, took a sip of water, and said to no one in particular, "I'm afraid to be myself." I heard it and understood all too well, because Paris, more than any other city, instills in us the right amount of theater: to enter "as if," to smile "as required," to disappear "as is customary." And yet, there was a honesty in this shock—who among us has not tried to be someone else for an invitation into the right room? I took my truth-kit from my bag: a book by Kapferer and a worn leather Chanel lipstick case that had long housed a pencil. I liked this cozy illogicality—a pencil in a lipstick case—more than any perfectly organized shelf; it was as if the objects had agreed that today, it was not lips but conclusions that needed to be colored. I opened the book to the marked page, found a phrase about the "social sieve," brought the graphite closer, and drew a thin line under every word that wasn't trying to please. In the margin, I wrote: "The sieve isn't brands. It's us. Our perspectives, the openings of our bags, the distance between 'hello' and 'who are you?'" The restrained graphite soothed my fingers—I dislike it when truth screams; let it whisper, but without trembling.
The set was being assembled like a well-cut peplum: millimeter by millimeter. The dresses, not yet numbered, were like people before they had an ID—modest, but already recognizable. Against the wall, three girls smoked (they smoked beautifully—like the punctuation of fear), one placing the toe of her sneaker on a chair, inhaling for exactly four counts. I found my heart beating in sync with her breaths: a strange empathy for someone who would soon become a line in our collective memory. And here, in this moment, my aesthetic misanthropy kicked in—quietly, without accusation, the kind that isn't screamed at protests: I found it easier to love the world in the form of silhouettes than in the form of a crowd; easier to love an object refined to its perfect shape than the humanoid noise around it. I love people one by one—the way one loves hand embroidery. Crowds tire me, even if they are dressed in perfect jackets. (Especially if they are dressed in perfect jackets.) Paris is a city where you physically feel the filters: on doors, in glances, in words. Here, "entry" is almost always about something. In a press release, they call it a "cultural code"; in life, it's the security guard's expression and the speed with which they hand you a glass. And where others see "elitism," I more often hear the dry click of a sieve: "passes/doesn't pass." Not just by clothing, but by voice, by the readiness to be silent, by how you hold a glass, and how you place a finger on the spine of a book. My aesthetic misanthropy doesn't hate people; it cuts off unnecessary channels. I turn off the radio static so that the text remains. And today, the text is the ruler, the cut, the gesture. A minute before the show, the air became dense; even the talc began to smell of a final decision. A photographer adjusted his strap to his left shoulder as if tuning a violin. In the room behind the wall, names accustomed to being proper nouns were taking their seats. By the door, two girls from the Lemarié atelier held a box of flowers from which perfect camellias are born; nearby, an assistant with Desrues tweezers held a clasp the way one holds a prickly thought—by the very edge, so as not to get pricked. I thought about how the "sieve" is often hidden in the word "taste": as if taste is a natural selection in the world of forms. But reality is harsher and more honest: taste is a selection within yourself. My misanthropy isn't contempt for people, but discipline toward myself: if something is aesthetically not my path, I don't explain or justify; I simply take off the item, move the chair, close my mouth. Sometimes the best etiquette is a refusal to participate. The lights went down, the music didn't start—a rustle was heard. The first model stepped not onto a runway, but into the air. I liked this trick: the space suddenly became the cut, and you realized the catwalk was unnecessary. The jacket sat like an argument, the skirt moved like a clarification, the cuff like a footnote. I felt that very chill for which brands are forgiven so much: precision. When there is precision, advertising words feel like litter. When there is no precision, any music sounds like static. And Kapferer's phrase returned once more: the "social sieve." Not necessarily malicious. Sometimes, it's salvific. The sieve separates not only "me from not me" but also "the eternal from the quickly disposable." I moved the pencil once more—a small diagonal dot in the margin: my sign for "it aligned." During the interludes, I didn't drink champagne (today I needed to stay cool), I watched hands. Hands are the best way to read the scene. A hand holding a seam. A hand removing a thread. A hand cupping a lighter's flame to keep the smell of smoke from rising higher than it should. And the hands of the girls from the petites mains who can make the invisible so perfect that without it, life would fall apart. Another observation clicked in my mind: misanthropy is often not about people. It is about the unbearable nature of noisy mediocrity. Craft is its medicine. When you see a seam sit perfectly, the irritation inside you turns off, like turning off the sound of a bad podcast. I don't hate the world—I simply set aside what is superfluous to see the seam. And if that is misanthropy, then I am ready to sign my name to it with both hands. After the final walk (it's never truly final here—the spirit of the brand likes to leave the door ajar), I went down the very same staircase where the mirrors multiply you worse than paparazzi and better than a psychotherapist. Downstairs, a small private salon awaited: a low table, archival books, a vase with white camellias that resembled a perfectly edited blank page. My vendeuse was waiting for me (she knew I disliked diminutives—there was no sugar in her "Mademoiselle"). We had a short conversation in two languages: "Look 7—the jacket and skirt, the inner pocket as we discussed; the camellia for the hair—not a collection gesture, but a signature; the gloves—no logo; and the Les Exclusifs travel spray—not for the bottle, but for the journey." I signed the order card, she made a note, and we nodded to each other like two participants in an impossibly old but still living game: "You understand me—I understand you, too." There was no snobbery in this exchange; there was professional reciprocity. If there was a "sieve" here, it was about responsibility: I knew what I was buying, they knew why they were selling.
Stepping back toward the backstage area, I ran into the same girl who "was afraid to be herself." She was now without the jacket, with a blanket over her shoulders, and with the look of relief people have after an exam they went to wearing someone else's jacket, only to discover they could speak with their own voice. "You seem... calmer," she said. "I just turned off the radio," I replied. She laughed—quietly. In the corner, another model stood, carefully putting a pair of shoes into a bag as if they were someone else's letters. "Is it the radio in your head you mean?" she asked. "Yes. My misanthropy is a switch. I turn off the noise so that only the form remains. People—one by one, please. I love them one by one." And to myself, I added: sometimes, the singular mode is an act of respect. On my way out, I flipped through the book again and added to the margins: "The 'social sieve' doesn't have to be an insult. Sometimes it's a surgical tool: carefully separating the fabric of a dream from the velcro of approval. The sieve is useful if it's directed inward. When I learn to exclude from my life chosen haste, verbal gloss, and forced relevance—I become freer and kinder to people. Quality control is not about them, it's about me. Yes, I am an aesthetic misanthrope, but it's not 'ugh, people,' it's 'yes, form': I prefer simple, direct speech over a complicated justification, one perfect camellia over five noisy trends, silence over empty chatter. And, yes, I am willing to pay for it—with time, attention, money. This is my 'price of admission to the dream.'" At the exit, a dark courtyard awaited, where cars stood like curly brackets. Paris breathed steadily, like a well-fitted lining. Before getting in, I returned to the salon for a second and bought a small item that seemed like the perfect toast to the evening: a hair comb with a tiny camellia. No collection hysteria—just a quiet sign that I was here and had listened. Thin paper rustled in the bag; on it, not a screaming logo, but a whisper. I like it when a brand knows how to whisper. The world screams far too often. On the street, I met Paris again—now nocturnal, where the light didn't say "look at me," but "go home." I walked. The wind moved my coat and caressed my cheek; the sound of my heels on the cobblestones reminded me that style isn't a sound, but a rhythm. I thought about how tonight, at this private show, in rooms that smelled of powder and fear, I had formed another internal formula: luxury is not only the right to say "yes," but also the strength to say "no." "No" to the noise, "no" to mandatory kindness toward mediocrity, "no" to the idea that being "one of them" means being "everyone at once." And one more "yes": "yes" to forms that keep you upright when the news pulls you down; "yes" to things in which you are not a stranger to yourself; "yes" to people—one by one, with a name and a breath. In the car, I took out the comb, held it against my hair for a second—not for a photo, but for a memory. Then I opened the book again and placed a small checkmark next to the underlined quote. In the margin, a new note: "If luxury is a sieve, let it first sift out my own weaknesses: the desire to please everyone, the fear of being precise, the habit of explaining. The rest will fall away on its own." And as I closed the book, I added in parentheses (for myself, for later): "Aesthetic misanthropy isn't a dislike of people. It's a love for form, which saves people from noisy pointlessness." Paris nodded: the streetlights on Cambon didn't go out abruptly but faded at the edges, and the city became even more beautiful, like a face from which the excess highlighter had been removed. I smiled.

Warsaw doesn't try to please at first glance—it keeps its figures in the shadows until you come closer. The courtyard wells breathe brick and dampness, the doors are heavy, brass, with old nameplates on the entrances with letters like on chess notation. The tram on Nowy Świat rings unhurriedly, the Vistula smells of metal and cold, the signs don't scream—they whisper in the neon Cyrillic of the past: "club," "bar," "pharmacy," like the black squares on which the game began. I climb into a pre-war building: the staircase is made of dark wood, the railings are polished by everyone who lived here before and after; the light bulb on the ceiling is a yellow disc under which dust flies in diagonals, like bishops on an open board. Inside the apartment, it's dim; two desk lamps with green shades create local islands of light; the window is open to the courtyards, and the wind moves the tulle just as hands move figures—logically, one by one. The man at the table is playing chess with his own shadow: a double moves on the wall, long and nervous, he either extends his arm or pulls it back, and it seems as if they are arguing about strategy in silence. He turns to me, offers the white pieces. I smile and shake my head: "I don't play. I watch." Observation is my superpower (and my way of not cornering myself into someone else's logic). I place on the windowsill the things that are always with me: Jean-Noël's book, a worn leather Chanel lipstick case in which my old, short pencil lives, and a thin, unlined notebook. I sit to the side to see not only the squares and the hands, but also the pauses between the moves—they are more important. Warsaw loves pauses: here on Mokotowska Street, the window displays are reserved, the clothes on the mannequins don't wave the tails of trends, but seem to await a conversation partner. In the evening, walking by, I always think that the city is like a well-arranged salon: you aren't offered, you are left alone with your own desire. "Do not sell—let the buyer buy on his own," I read aloud and open the book to a bookmark where a few of my gray lines already exist. I draw a new one—exactly under the phrase, neatly, like a fold on an invisible lining seam. The pencil lies softly, and the graphite gives that quiet confidence I adore: as if a thought has become a thing. I look at the board. The man moved his knight, the shadow repeated. On the table—stone and wood: smooth white pieces and a dark board with a barely visible grain pattern; a light tap when the rook touches the corner—the sound of quality, not ambition. I am silent, because in a good place, silence is a service. In a bad one, the service is given a microphone. In my head, I replay scenes where they tried to "sell" me something: speeches that were too fast in light that was too bright, too much "today-only-for-you," too little air. Those moments always smell of haste, and haste is the deodorant of fear. Warsaw today smells of beeswax and old wood. I brush a tiny speck of dust off the table with my finger and think about how in luxury, every unit of silence is a currency. You don't impose, you withstand. Like dough for good bread (yes, the irony: I don't eat it, but the principle of fermentation helps with aesthetics no less than in a bakery). To sell means to approach. To allow someone to buy means to step back half a step and hold a pause. I watch him reach for the bishop, as the breathing in the room changes, barely perceptibly. I like to record changes that are not sold with chests of words. In a gallery on Foksal Street, I recently saw an amber ring—the tag had no description or "inspiration," only the craftswoman's name and the year. I stood for ten minutes, then came back three days later and bought it without a word. Not because they explained why it "belonged with me," but because they left me alone to look. "Jean-Noël," I say in my mind, "you would appreciate Warsaw's restraint. Here, even grocers don't put out the entire assortment on the table, they leave room for imagination." The man makes another move; the shadow falls behind for a fraction of a second, and I suddenly catch myself worrying for the shadow. Absurd? No. In luxury, I almost always worry not about the thing, but about the space around it: will it have enough air, light, a pause? The real object is beautiful as a piece, but it wins the game with context. I take out my notebook and write in the corner: "The will of the buyer is an art form. It must be respected like personal time." It's funny, but this thesis is never included in a brief, though it holds half a store together. On Mokotowska Street, I once entered a small leather glove boutique. The saleswoman said hello and went to the back room, leaving me alone with rows of sizes and shades. For ten minutes, I simply felt the stitching and listened to how the leather responded to my fingers. After fifteen, I left my card and took two pairs—without a story, without "these would go perfectly with." And yesterday on Bracka Street at Vitkac, I saw the opposite: they swooped in on me, put everything on me, "everyone is getting these glasses today," "this case is a hit," "here's a chain too, it really makes the look." I took off the glasses, put down the chain, left, and bought my own—where they played a classic game with me, not blitz: a look, silence, a step. The man at the table smiles as if he heard my thoughts. "You really don't play?" "No. I watch. Observation is my way of making moves on time." And it's true: in chess, you don't lose because you were late with a piece, but because you were too quick with a thought. In stores, on the contrary, they think you need to rush with words. I get up and walk along the shelves: books about Warsaw, about cinema, architectural albums, black and white photographs—on one, Poniatowski Bridge in the fog, on another, an old jeweler's sign, the letters "W.KR..." cut off by the frame; the frame is slightly scratched, which only makes it more honest. On the chest of drawers—a glass vase with dry cornflowers, next to it—a clock with a porcelain face on which the hands move confidently, as if no one ever rushed them to be more fashionable. I return to the windowsill, look at the book again. Under the phrase I underlined, I put a tiny dot—my mark for "checked in practice." The practice is what happens in a couple of hours. We go outside; the Warsaw night is slightly damp, the cobblestone holds a step like a corset holds a shape. I need to walk—that's how I put my thoughts in order. On the corner of Swiętokrzyska Street, a small antique shop is open: a man in a vest watches soccer without sound, on a shelf nearby are chess clocks with chipped black lacquer, the hands frozen at 3:12. I go in, take them in my hands, feel the weight, hear the spring inside trembling slightly. No one rushes to explain their "vintage" or "rarity," no one says, "let me tell you a story." The man nods, as if to say: choose for yourself. The price tag has a number and silence. I leave my card and take the clocks. Not because I "have to," but because no one was selling them to me. The freedom of decision is my favorite luxury material. I return to the apartment; the chess game ended in a draw—and that is perfect: a draw, like a pause, is a refusal of unnecessary drama. We drink tea from thin glass; the light from the green shades flows over the rims of the cups, the table rustles slightly under my palm. I don't mention the clocks, don't explain "why I took them." I just place them on the windowsill next to the book, and the hands immediately begin to live at my pace. "You did make a move after all," the man says. "Yes. But not on the board." I write another short line in my notebook: "Luxury is respect for the moment of choice. It doesn't need guides, it needs light." Warsaw outside the window agrees: I hear the tram ring exactly once—enough to signify its presence, and not enough to disrupt the note. The houses, restrained and strict, hold their facades straight, like pieces that know the value of the center. I close the book, put the pencil back in the case—softly, without a click, like closing a box with something already decided. I put the small receipt from the antique shop into my coat pocket—the thin paper rustles as if to confirm: the purchase happened on a frequency where words are more of a hindrance than a help. "Jean-Noël," I mentally smile, "today Warsaw played for your quote better than any salesman. No one was selling. I bought it myself." At the doorstep, I look back at the table: the neatly arranged pieces await the next evening, the shadows will become opponents again, the green shades will light up like position signals. I go out onto the staircase, and the house breathes with that very old wood that knows how to wait. Outside, the air reflects the light of the streetlights, the asphalt is cold but not hostile, and I walk, counting the cobblestone squares to the intersection, just as I used to count the steps to my bedroom as a child. In my bag—the clocks, the book, the pencil; in my head—a clear thesis: the best things are always quietly powerful. They are not sold, they wait for the person who is ready to see in them not a commodity, but a move. And as I walk confidently toward the hotel, for the first time all day, I don't want to summarize, but to leave the conclusions unwritten. Let the decision, like the game with the shadow, remain in the memory of the room—without commentary. In luxury, comments are often cheaper than silence. And silence is the only language in which a choice can be heard completely.