Have you bought anything weirdly out of character during these past almost two years? Have you indulged in any late-night tipsy shopping, fallen down an internet hole, weighed the merits of certain items, different colours, different sizes and then just bought them all? No judgment here.
We’re all looking for that dopamine hit that we used to get from oh, I don’t know, seeing people and living a normal life. Not sure if long, slow science agrees with me, but I am certain that the joy and relief we used to get from unloading onto friends over a glass of wine after a particularly hellish day has been replaced by hitting ‘Buy Now’ for a battery-powered milk frother from Amazon.
A usually sensible girlfriend of mine recently became obsessed with the Goyard Saint Louis tote bag. I hadn’t helped matters as I’d shown her a photo (main image) that I sneakily took on a train from Cannes to Ventimiglia back in June of 2019. And it really is a cute tote to take to a farmer’s market in Italy. (Europe, right? People cross borders on the weekend just for homemade pesto). But thirteen hundred euros for this particular discontinued colour on TheRealReal? You could actually fly to Europe from Canada and still have money left over. Like so many of us, I think my friend wants the trip and the bag was merely a proxy.
I’m bad too. After my lockdown online extravagance (I now own pretty much the entire Westman Atelier makeup line, have enough white linen bedding to outfit multiples guest bedrooms and never need to buy another scented candle) I am trying to transfer my dopamine-seeking to smaller items, specifically weird recherché liqueurs. Thirty or forty dollars is not an excessive amount of money to spend and even after the purchase is completed, there’s the time I’ll be happily absorbed researching new cocktails.
My latest strange liqueur is Licor 43, ($31.85, LCBO.com.) a popular Spanish vanilla, citrus and herb mix which apparently makes a screwdriver taste like a creamsicle. Works for me.