What Do You Actually Want?
How do we know what we actually want?
We see something beautiful, expensive, scarce, celebrated, difficult to obtain, worn by the right person, displayed in the right room—and we want it.
Or think we do.
The more developed our tastes become, the more we like to believe we're immune to influence.
We know what we like. We know quality. We're certainly not being told what to want by advertising, algorithms or whatever TikTok has decided everyone needs this week.
Except none of us develops taste in a vacuum.
We learn what beauty looks like. We learn which names matter. We absorb the preferences of our families, our friends, our lovers, the cities we live in and the cultures we move through.
Someone whose taste we admire tells us something is brilliant and we look again. We encounter something enough times and familiarity becomes preference.
So I spent a week paying unusually close attention to desire. I wasn't trying to suppress it or become less materialistic. I wasn't pretending beauty, luxury, status or other people's opinions don't affect me.
I wanted to catch the moment before the explanation arrived.
What do I actually want?
And how do I know the wanting is mine?
I started at Bergdorf Goodman.
There is no way for me to experience Bergdorf objectively. I walked into the store for the first time twenty-five years ago, at nineteen, for a job interview.
It was September 2001, days after 9/11. The city was silent. Dust filled the air. The skies were gray. Faces were stunned with shock and etched with grief.
I had never been anywhere like Bergdorf Goodman.
I was a pastor's daughter from a suburb of Arizona. I was tall, thin and pretty, and I'd made it to New York by getting signed by a modeling agency. I didn't like the industry, so I quit and started college at FIT. I'd been paying my bills by waiting tables and nannying and needed something stable and full-time.
Bergdorf intimidated me. The security guards made me nervous. I wasn't sure how to be in a place that quiet and beautiful.
The store was on a hiring freeze, but the woman who would become my boss had been searching for months. She had enough power and influence in the store to make an exception.
She hired me.
That decision changed my life.
Before I knew it, I was exploring the mazes of the stockrooms and finding forgotten treasures.
Bergdorf had already been there for a century, and what existed behind the scenes was sometimes as interesting as what was on the floor. I heard stories about Mr. Goodman and the women who had shopped there when he was still in the store. I met Oscar de la Renta, Manolo Blahnik, Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana, and Paul McCartney. I got a photograph with Karl Lagerfeld. Bill Cunningham photographed me for the style section of the New York Times. I dressed actresses, politicians, powerful women and a queen.
I learned the difference between something expensive and something extraordinary. I learned how clothes were supposed to fit. I learned what quality felt like before I looked at the label.
And I changed. I walked with more confidence. I owned my place there. I worked hard and was good at my job. I was proud to be there.
Eventually, I belonged there.
Twenty-five years later, I walk through the front doors instead of the employee entrance. I still miss the doorman on 58th Street who retired a few years ago. He knew every guest's name.
This time I took the elevator to the fifth floor because I needed something to wear for a panel on luxury and consumer goods.
I scanned Marant. No. Zimmermann. No. Alice + Olivia, Simkhai, L'Agence. Everything felt overdone. Everyone I know is wearing them all the time. I looked at Pucci and Missoni, but nothing was quite right.
Then I saw Courrèges.
Yes.
My heart knew immediately. More accurately, my body did. Desire has always been a fairly reliable litmus test for me.
I hadn't seen Courrèges in years. The clothes felt fashion-forward and classic at once. Retro French without becoming costume. I found a white button-down with covered buttons, patch pockets, extravagant cuffs and a scarf instead of a conventional collar. I paired it with a short white skirt, pantyhose and fawn suede Manolo Blahnik pumps.
I felt alive in it.
The Things We Learn to Want
It would be convenient to decide that this is the secret: ignore everyone else and trust your instincts.
Except I knew Courrèges. I knew Manolo. I had twenty-five years of experience informing that supposedly instantaneous response.
For me, Bergdorf always wins. I would rather buy something there than buy the exact same thing somewhere else. The experience of buying it there is part of its value to me.
And if someone put an unidentified pump on my foot in a non-luxury store and it felt as wonderful as a Manolo Blahnik, would I value it exactly the same way?
Probably not.
I'd be skeptical.
I've learned to trust Manolo. The name means something to me because of my experience with the shoes: construction, proportion, comfort, history, consistency. Prestige and quality get tangled together, and sometimes for good reason.
Prestige can be built by quality in the first place.
That same week I saw evening gowns handmade by FIT students. They were remarkable. They could have been in any couture fashion house.
But I knew that if one of those exact gowns carried a Dior label, I'd assign it a much higher price.
I could see the quality without the label and still allow the label to affect what I thought it was worth.
So the question couldn't really be whether I was influenced.
Of course I was.
I was more interested in what the influence was actually doing.
At Pastis, I found myself thinking about familiarity.
It was loud and crowded, and our table was near the entrance. They were running behind, but the hostess was sweet when she apologized and we didn't care. It was a beautiful September day, sunny with crisp air, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood.
The menu was simple. I had an omelet with Gruyère. It was good. Not extraordinary. Just the kind of good-quality brunch New Yorkers expect from a place they return to.
There was nothing novel about Pastis, and that was part of what I liked.
It doesn't feel dated because it isn't trying very hard not to be.
It isn't chasing the moment. It knows what it is.
After brunch, my daughter and I happened upon a small shop connected to Amma, the Indian spiritual leader and humanitarian known around the world as “the hugging saint” for embracing the people who come to see her.
We saw it and immediately got excited. Amma had hugged us twice in Santa Fe and once in Los Angeles. The store was filled with incense and reminded us of our former home in Austin.
We found the dolls Amma blesses, including one like my daughter used to have. There was the same pink blanket she has in her room. I wanted a brass cobra because I don't have one. I wanted a Ganesh because I'd given mine to my son for his college dorm room.
I didn't buy anything.
I just felt good in there.
Warm and familiar.
Like coming home.
That was enough.
Who Taught You to Look?
Later that afternoon, we went to Pace Gallery.
I saw Lynda Benglis's work before really understanding its relationship to Jonathan Anderson's Dior couture collection. The sculptures were fun, fanciful, strange and interesting. I liked them.
Then I learned what Anderson had seen in them: the folding, knotting and manipulation of material, the transformation of flat surfaces into dimensional forms.
I looked at the Dior collection he'd created from that language.
It was stunning.
I would have liked Benglis without knowing about Dior. But once I saw what Anderson had seen in it, I saw more too.
That interested me.
Someone else's taste hadn't told me what to like, but it had shown me where to look.
Then I wandered into another room and found work I hadn't come to see at all.
Deep, rich colors blurred into forms that reminded me of the natural world. It was almost like looking at watercolor and seeing shapes and images that weren't really there.
I thought it was beautiful.
It was my favorite work in the gallery.
No one had told me to care about it.
We left Pace and eventually made our way to the High Line. I don't particularly love the High Line. I understand that New Yorkers are starved for outdoor space and that it's a creative use of old train tracks, but to me it's still basically a very long walkway.
We walked down it toward Bvlgari's enormous Serpenti installation.
There were crowds around it. Phones were out. Everyone was taking pictures.
From a distance, I was intrigued.
I wanted to love it.
Then I got closer.
It was basically a massive gold balloon.
I was more disappointed because Bvlgari had made it. The name had raised my expectations. The spectacle promised something. The crowd made it seem as though there must be something there to discover.
If Bvlgari hadn't commissioned it, I probably would have wondered why there was a giant gold balloon on the High Line.
The hype could make me look.
It couldn't make me care.
Earlier that day, we'd approached another exhibition and found a line stretching down the street.
All four of us looked at it and said no.
New Yorkers don't wait in lines like that. They reek of influencer-fueled tourist traps.
The demand didn't increase my desire.
It killed it.
And yet we're surrounded by mechanisms designed to produce exactly the opposite response.
A line attracts a line. Scarcity creates urgency. A reservation becomes more desirable because nobody can get one. Something becomes culturally important and we approach it already prepared to be impressed.
When the Experience Doesn't Match the Desire
That night I went to Jean's.
I wore a sexy bustier-style Dolce & Gabbana dress splashed with red roses.
Jean's was intriguing when we walked in. The crowd was mostly late twenties and early thirties. Attractive. Definitely model types. Very trendy and see-and-be-seen. It was the kind of place that was difficult to get into and everyone seemed to want to be at.
And it was a shit show.
We had a terrible table in a long row of two-tops. The walkway to the kitchen was directly behind us, so people were constantly passing. It was loud. The service was rude. There wasn't much on the menu we wanted, and at one point we considered leaving.
We should have.
Toward the end of dinner, a server picked up a knife from our table and tried to squeeze through the space behind my husband.
She stabbed him in the arm.
It was insane.
You can only ask reputation to do so much.
We got into a Lyft and left.
The following night was more complicated.
I'd wanted to go to Le Coucou for years.
The restaurant was smaller than I expected and more gray. The bar was glamorous. The room was French SoHo upscale—more countryside and less slick than I'd imagined, but beautiful in a refined, comfortable way.
The crowd was elegant. It was quiet.
It felt luxurious.
I was also with one of my best friends, who is very New York chic, and I was happy to see him.
My husband thought his steak was one of the best he'd ever had. My friend said his lobster melted in his mouth.
I had the black bass.
It was bland and had bones.
I wanted to love it. I had waited years to go there. I liked the room. I liked the people. I liked being there.
I just didn't like my dinner.
What Would You Save?
A few days later, I visited The Impossible Couture Collection, a private exhibition of extraordinary fashion.
Galliano.
McQueen.
Saint Laurent.
These weren't abstract names to me. Galliano and McQueen were at the height of their careers when I worked in fashion. Seeing a piece from McQueen's final runway collection was emotional. Losing him was heartbreaking. He was a genius.
I walked through everything once and then gave myself an assignment:
If the entire collection were going to disappear tomorrow, which piece would I save?
I didn't want to choose based on price, fame, historical importance or what I thought I was supposed to recognize.
I wanted the one I personally couldn't bear to lose.
I chose a white Galliano evening gown.
Why?
Because my daughter had looked at it and said she wanted it as her wedding dress.
That was it.
I could see her getting married in it. I didn't care what it was worth or how rare it was.
I didn't simply want the gown to exist.
I wanted her to have what she wanted.
Then I made myself choose the opposite: something I understood was extraordinary but wouldn't save.
An Yves Saint Laurent Mondrian dress.
I know its importance.
I understand why it matters.
I don't love the design.
I could recognize that it was important without wanting it at all.
Before You Read the Label
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, I tried another version of the experiment.
Look first.
Read later.
Again and again, I found myself drawn to particular garments and only afterward read the descriptions.
McQueen.
Gaultier.
Mugler.
Givenchy.
Westwood.
Designers I already knew and loved.
I found that fascinating. If branding were producing the attraction, taking away the label should have changed my response.
Instead, I seemed to recognize the creative language before I recognized the name.
Maybe after you've seen enough, touched enough, worn enough and experienced enough, some of the recognition happens before conscious thought.
And then I saw something I didn't recognize at all.
A necklace.
I stopped.
Oh fuck, that is gorgeous.
It was Simon Costin's Memento Mori necklace: jet beads, rock crystal, rabbit skulls, turkey talons and carved black wood.
I kept staring at it.
It was dark.
Powerful.
Mysterious.
It was Kali. It was tantric.
Death wasn't hidden or cleaned up or made acceptable. It was right there, made beautiful and worn on the body.
I wondered where all of those pieces had been before they came together.
Whose hands had touched them.
What they had meant.
What stories they could tell.
It wasn't beautiful despite the skulls and talons.
They were part of its beauty.
It moved me.
I hadn't known the designer. I didn't know its price. I didn't know whether it was famous or historically important. I didn't know whether I was supposed to care.
Something in the object had met something already inside me.
I already knew Kali. I already knew Tantra. Darkness, death, fear, sexuality and beauty were already part of how I understood the world.
Of course I brought all of that to the necklace.
We bring our entire lives to what we love.
At the beginning of the experiment, I thought I was investigating desire.
By the end, I realized I was investigating choice.
At a conference that week, I was asked to define luxury.
I said:
“Luxury is a feeling. The ultimate luxury is choice—agency over your time, what you create, who you spend your life with, and what gets your attention. You are your greatest asset, and where you invest yourself is the most important decision.”
I understand that answer differently now.
Attention is one of the ways we spend our lives, and there is an enormous amount competing for it.
Brands want it.
Algorithms want it.
Beautiful people want it.
Institutions want it.
Status wants it.
Fear wants it.
Other people's desires want it.
When I finally asked myself what I desired less after understanding more about how desire is constructed, the answer surprised me.
Not much.
I like beautiful things.
I like luxury.
I like exquisite clothes and wonderful restaurants.
I like being moved.
I like being seen.
I like being desired.
I Don't Want to Transcend Desire.
I want more.
More love, connection, beauty, quality, luxury, refinement, intimacy and depth.
More richness, comfort, warmth and familiarity.
More excitement.
More mystery.
More things that move me.
More of the old becoming new again.
More things that withstand time.
Maybe that's what I was looking for all along.
Not some desire untouched by influence, but the ability to tell the difference between something I think I should want and something I actually do.
We bring our entire lives to what we love. I don't need my desires to have developed independently of all of that.
They didn't.
I just want to recognize the moment when the answer is mine.
