I recently (re)watched all three seasons of Victoria [2016-2019] and was reminded that Tom Hughes (i) is extremely handsome, and (ii) has never been featured in my Period Drama Boyfriend series. This oversight is especially egregious because Hughes is one of those actors who’s done more period dramas than contemporary roles, so I knew I had to rectify it immediately. So I did my, ahem, homework and I present:

Birthday: April 18 (Aries)

Middle Name: None as far as I can tell — and can I take a moment to say how rare it is to find another person who (like me) doesn’t have a middle name? Especially a British person. Just an observation.

Posh: No, which is also rare for a British actor. Though he did graduate from RADA, which is a fancy drama school, afaik. Fun fact: he was the guitarist in an indie band at one point. Also seems to have a decent singing voice, judging from a snippet in Victoria.

Height: 6’1 (according to Google)

Fave period drama: Hughes has a small but pivotal supporting role in Dancing on the Edge, but he’s brilliant in it and the mini-series itself is also brilliant, and full of incredible performances (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthew Goode, Anthony Head, Jacqueline Bisset, Joanna Vanderham, and more). It tells the story of a black jazz band in 1930s London, its rise and downfall thanks to a series of tragic events. It’s one of my fave period dramas set in that era, and I’ve rewatched it several times.

Sexiest period drama role: Prince Albert in Victoria (especially Season 1), hands down. Surprisingly, it’s one of his few “swoony” roles, although Albert is too complicated a character to consider a straightforward romantic hero. [I actually thought the series did a decent job of showing the complexities of a marriage, and how there’s no ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ only multifaceted, flawed humans. That’s not to say that it was an accurate historical portrayal necessarily, only an interesting portrayal of a marriage based on Victoria & Albert’s.]

Interestingly, Hughes has tended to play a lot of characters with a dark side — not straight up villains, but not conventional heroes either. There’s a sort of slippery moral ambiguity he nails really well, where you can’t be sure, when he turns up on screen, whether his character is going to end up doing the right thing, or something that’ll break your heart. Based on some of the interviews I’ve read, I think he enjoys exploring morally grey characters, which has undoubtedly influenced his career choices.

I’ll add an honourable mention here to The Laureate, in which Hughes plays poet and writer Robert Graves during a period of his life when he was recovering from PTSD (WWI) and became involved in a complicated relationship with two women. [Which resulted in a major scandal in the 1930s. I had no idea Graves’ life was such a rollercoaster. I’m def on the lookout for a biography now.] The movie isn’t sexy/romantic as such, but it’s a very broody role and an excellent performance.

I also think his character in The Game (a Cold Era spy thriller series) could be a contender in this category but, alas, I have not managed to track that down to watch. Yet.

Austen adaptation: None. It came down to timing, I think. Hughes was too young during the 2000s era of Austen adaptations and he’s now probably too old for all the new ones being rolled out. Ten years ago, I could have seen him playing Willoughby easily.

Murder mystery cameos: Hughes played Michael Rogers in the “Endless Night” episode of Marple, and he was brilliant in it. That episode stayed with me for a long time. It’s definitely one of Christie’s darker stories, and I love it. He was also in The Lady Vanishes, which is a period mystery thriller involving the disappearance of an elderly woman on a train. He plays an engineer/fellow passenger who offers to help the female protagonist who is trying to find the missing woman.

Fave contemporary role: This one’s tough because I honestly haven’t seen more than a couple, so I’ll go with Silk, an older British legal drama series. The first season (in which he appears) is excellent, and definitely worth a watch for the performances of the lead actors, Maxine Peake and Rupert Penry Jones (another Period Drama Boyfriend). Hughes plays Nick, an articling student — coincidentally, alongside a very young Natalie Dormer, who is also really good; it’s a small part, but it was my first time seeing him on screen and he made enough of an impression that I remembered it years later.

Least romantic role: Wikipedia reminded me of this one. He played the abusive boyfriend of Domhnall Gleeson’s character’s sister in About Time. I really enjoyed that movie, but I do not remember Hughes in it at all.

Watch at your own risk: It pains me to say this but … A Discovery of Witches season 2. Hughes plays Kit Marlowe which, on one hand, is great casting and, on the other hand, a total missed opportunity because, guyssss, the writing is so bad. I loved the books, but the show really dropped the ball after season 1. I mean, when you have daemon Kit Marlowe (who is in love with a vampire who is in love with a witch) played by Tom “Brooding is my middle name” Hughes and somehow you make it super boring … you done messed up.

Happy period drama watching, loves!

It’s a red-letter day, friends: I’m turning 45 today. That means I’m now officially closer to 50 than 40. I don’t know how I feel about that. I rarely think about my age. I’m not afraid of getting older, but personal history (and residual trauma) makes me fear running out of time. Rather than dwell on that, I try to focus on living each day to the fullest and not putting off things that are important to me. That has been one of the best lessons my 40s have taught me so far. Don’t postpone your joy.

That, and not giving any f*cks about other people’s opinions on how I live my life. My circus, not their monkeys.

As much as I love the idea of a spoil yo’self birthday week, I never seem to find the energy to apply myself to making it happen. This week has been just your average, middle of the summer kind of week. I do have fun plans for today and the weekend, though. Nothing too wild: a thrift adventure with a friend, a day trip to Calgary with the fam, pedicures with my SIL. My social battery comes from Temu, so we gotta conserve it, lol!

I did treat myself to a few new books, including Amy Odell’s new biography of Gwyneth Paltrow. As someone who came of age in the 90s, I’ve had a decades-long love/hate relationship with GP, so I was excited to dig into all the behind-the-scenes gossip and drama that the book promised. It delivered some, for sure. There are some very juicy tidbits in there about Brad, Ben, Chris, and her various other boyfriends. (Though, interestingly, very little about her current husband.) The second half of the book is focused on the drama with Goop, which was somewhat less interesting to me because it’s pretty straightforward (Goop peddles nonsense about ‘wellbeing’, sometimes merely silly and sometimes very dangerous). The book reads like an extended Vanity Fair article, which is my preferred style of celebrity reportage, so no complaints on that score. I do wish there was more cultural analysis weaved into the biographical narrative, but Odell sticks mostly to facts. I also got the sense she was pulling her punches, likely to avoid getting sued by Gwyneth, who (allegedly) has a vindictive streak. Anyway, I will repeat here what I’ve said before: I wish Anne Helen Peterson would do a deep, detailed breakdown of GP’s public persona (particularly in the 90s and early 2000s) within the broader cultural Zeitgeist.

If you’ve read Odell’s book, I would love to hear your thoughts 😉

Have a great weekend!

Editor’s note: hi, it’s me, I’m the editor. The content of this series is adapted from the Memoir That Never Was, which I wrote last year. The themes centered on identity-making and my relationship with secondhand stuff), but in writing it, I ended up synthesizing ideas that have been pivotal to my growth as a person since turning 40. Although I decided to shelve my Memoir That Never Was indefinitely, I decided that there are parts of it I would like to share here on the blog. It will get pretty personal/vulnerable at times, but I think the community we’ve created here is a wonderful (and safe) space, and I hope that these posts will inspire reflection and conversation. Cheers!

Let’s jump back to the full-closet-nothing-to-wear dilemma and talk about how one might tackle it with the Functional Clothes Wearer vs Creative Clothes Wearer distinction in mind. The first question I would ask myself is simple, and applies no matter what kind of relationship someone has with their clothes: am I doing ok? Don’t skip it. If your wellbeing – physical, emotional or mental – is suffering, it’s very likely to have a negative impact on your satisfaction with whatever you’re wearing, whether you’re a Functional Clothes Wearer or a Creative Clothes Wearer. When we are not feeling well, it is much harder to feel positive about anything, whether it’s something we care about a little or a lot. For me, dissatisfaction with my outfits is one of the earliest signs that my mental wellbeing is deteriorating; my creative drive grinds to a halt long before other parts of my life start to come undone. On the flip side, practicing creativity – even in small ways – can boost my sense of wellbeing. When my mom was dying, I got dressed up every day to go visit her; I did that for no other reason than because it made me feel better, more like myself, through the worst time of my life. It didn’t make any part of that journey easier, but it helped me to not lose myself in the process. Creativity doesn’t have to look creative or produce tangible products to “count”. Anything can be a creative act if it combines intention and meaning. It can be as simple as arranging a single flower in a bud vase on our desk, or the ritual of a morning cup of tea using a favourite blend and a teacup that used to belong to our grandmother. There is poetry in the prosaic.[1]

But let’s assume that we are well. Then, the root cause of sartorial dissatisfaction can usually be found by examining our relationship with our clothes to see where it might be getting off-track. For Functional Clothes Wearers, I think there are two common causes of dissatisfaction, one functional and one philosophical. Functional dissatisfaction happens when closets aren’t serving the functions someone needs them to serve — or not serving them well. Changes in personal circumstances – starting a new job, moving to a different city, becoming a parent, physical changes – can throw even a high-performing closet into disarray. Have your functional needs changed recently? If so, it could explain why you’re suddenly at war with your closet. Philosophical dissatisfaction can happen when a closet reflects back the owner’s confusion about their relationship with clothes. A Functional Clothes Wearer who thinks she must stay on top of fashion trends or else risk getting called out on TikTok, may end up buying clothes she thinks she ought to buy, but which she neither likes nor finds useful. “Wear what you like” is a phrase that solicits too many eyerolls and not enough respect, in my opinion. Its ambiguity doesn’t render it meaningless; it makes room for a plurality of meaning. It’s literally the only piece of sartorial advice that applies to everyone. For Functional Clothes Wearers, it’s a reminder (and permission, if permission feels needed) that it’s ok not to engage with fashion as a hobby, creative or otherwise. Function and art may overlap, but that doesn’t mean they are inextricable. If one is simply trying to paint one’s house, one doesn’t need to be Picasso. Everyone needs to wear clothes, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to find personal fulfillment in fashion. Wearing what you like, simply because you like it and it works for you, is totally valid.

The specter of looking “dated” is something that seems to haunt a lot of people – particularly, I think, Functional Clothes Wearers. W. David Marx argues that fashion cycles are driven by humanity’s constant striving for status, writing:

[f]ashion cycles … [move] the population from one arbitrary practice to another for no reason other than elitist distinction and social conformity. Emulation is a delusional lunge at status improvement that only bolsters the existing social hierarchy.[2]

Basically, fashion cycles are kicked off because the high-status elites need new ways by which to distinguish themselves from the masses, thereby reinforcing their high status; the trends that emerge are then emulated, in a kind of hierarchical cascade, by everyone else, from early adopters all the way to what Marx calls the “laggards” – “individuals [who] are always out of sync with culture, which suggests a lack of social capital, a meager media diet, and, in some cases, a disregard for basic social norms.”[3] Once a trend is adopted (passively) by laggards, it has irrevocably reached the end of its cycle. Nobody wants to be the laggard in this scenario, to be inadvertently late to a party everyone else has already left. When it comes to fashion, I think Functional Clothes Wearers can be especially susceptible to this fear, precisely because they engage with clothes as functional objects of consumption, not as vehicles of creative expression. But there are a few things worth considering here. One, fashion is notorious for churning out micro trends because its business model requires constant perceived newness to drive consumption; social media amplifies these micro trends because social media also requires constant perceived newness to drive engagement. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all, of even most, micro trends are markers of status; in other words, unless you’re an influencer, you can probably sit out most micro trends without fear of being “laggardly”. Two, macro trends move relatively slowly. Skinny jeans, for example, fell “out of fashion” over a period of several years, for most of which time they continued to be worn by large segments of the general public, even as countless articles warned of their impending loss of coolness. Three, looking “dated” is rarely a function of a single item of clothing. Something is “dated” not simply by being out of sync with current trends, but by being instantly recognizable as belonging to a specific past time period. Skinny jeans, alone, might not make an outfit dated, especially when paired with current, in-trend pieces. Skinny jeans, peplum tops, and bubble necklaces? Perhaps a different story. Four, trends are cyclical – especially in fashion. Marx writes:

“[a]fter contaminated trends are fully abandoned, they may be forgotten. And as negative symbolic associations fade, the trends are primed for a comeback. Once a convention is removed from “circulation and consideration” – and no longer associated with present-day adopters – innovators can resurrect it as a new means of distinction. The Adidas Country sneaker debuted in 1971 as a suburban cross-country show popular with “corny preppy kids”. But by 1987 it had disappeared from suburban culture, allowing New York’s hip-hop elites to embrace it as their own.”[4]

Some trends may need decades to make their comeback; others barely leave before they’re back again. Just look at leopard print or, on the other end of the spectrum, preppy style. All of this to say, the fear of looking “dated” is overblown, in my opinion, relative to the average person’s risk of suffering sudden and catastrophic embarrassment as a result of their sartorial choices. Unless you haven’t been to the mall, watched any media, or left the house in years, the odds are that wearing whatever you like will not make you any kind of social pariah. There is one exception, and it’s not so much an exception as an asterisk to this conversation. If the primary function one wants their clothes to serve is status-signaling, then by necessity one must pay attention to trends – the right ones, anyway – to be able to use them to maximize social cachet.

For Creative Clothes Wearers, “wear what you like” is a reminder of a different kind: that fashion is a tool – a means to an end, not an end in itself. We should wear what we like because it is the embodiment of our creativity. Creative Clothes Wearers should also look at trends – not because they dictate what we must wear, but because artists must be familiar with and understand their tools. If fashion is a language, then trends form its vocabulary. Personal style is the act of writing. When it comes to closet dissatisfaction, Creative Clothes Wearers face two common issues as well. The functional issue is the same as everyone else’s: even if clothing is a form of self-expression, there are still functional needs that need to be met and sometimes our closets end up missing the mark. The philosophical issue ties back to the imperative of “wear what you like”. Do we know what we like? In other words, do we know what we want to communicate? If we are at the beginning of our personal style journey – or, as I was back in 2014, still grappling with the question of identity – we may not be sure. Other times, we may not immediately notice when what we want to communicate changes (because we have changed), and our closet needs to catch up. Which brings us to the second part of the issue: are our clothes allowing us to communicate what we want to say, in the way we want to say? It is a far more open-ended question than those which might confront a Functional Clothes Wearer dealing with a problematic closet, but that is the nature of expression itself. We find ourselves in the telling.

Sartorial happiness lies not only in understanding how we relate to clothes – what they mean to us and how we use them – but also being aware that not everyone around us feels the same. We should not look at the choices other people make with their clothing without taking into consideration that different perspectives or values may lie behind them. Functional Clothes Wearers and Creative Clothes Wearers can have interesting conversations about fashion and clothes, but they probably shouldn’t take advice from each other. Take, for example, the idea of paring down clothing choices to a personal uniform to reduce decision-making load; many tout it as a transformative lifehack, and I’m sure it works for plenty of people who aren’t Steve Jobs, but I’m also sure it will never work for me – ditto for the ever-popular capsule wardrobe idea, in its many iterations. Any proposition that seeks to automatize, simplify, and remove experimentation from the clothes experience will never make me a happier, more productive person; it will only suck joy out of my life. I only wish it hadn’t taken me years – and many failed attempts at capsule-ing my closet – to realize that, but better later than never. On the flip side, if you’re a Functional Clothes Wearer, or mostly leaning that way, you will probably not find much joy in turning your clothes into an art project, picking adjectives to describe your personal style, or curating the perfect Pinterest mood-board. When engaging with any kind of fashion discourse, I think it’s helpful to ask ourselves: what is being prioritized here, function or form, and how does that align with my priorities? Knowing that helps us not only make sense of the information or ideas being presented to us, but also our choices in what we may do with it. Our closet satisfaction depends on it.

[1] Philip Mann, The Dandy At Dusk: Taste and Melancholy in the Twentieth Century, 2017, p. 50

[2] W. David Marx, Status and Culture, p. 201

[3] Marx, p. 196

[4] Marx p. 215