Reductive Elegance

To risk taking things a bit too seriously for a moment, the Oxford English Dictionary defines Elegance as “Refined grace of form and movement, tastefulness of adornment, refined luxury.” And further in terms “Of spoken or written compositions, etc.: tasteful correctness, harmonious simplicity…” And lastly, “of scientific processes, demonstrations, inventions, etc.: Neatness, ingenious simplicity, convenience, and effectiveness.”

One of the common threads amongst these definitions is that they all consider the ways in which parts create a whole. Whether each form and movement creates an overall sense of grace, or whether a variety of simple things work together in seamless harmony, none of them zeros in and pinpoints the locus of elegance as one detail or another. And herein for me lies the secret – not that I profess to know the answer, but rather one of the possible questions.

Elegance seems to me to be about selection and discretion. It’s not about who has the most expensive necktie or who can send more thank you notes than the next. While appreciating fine clothing and displaying impeccable manners (the later being far more significant than the former) are certainly hallmarks of elegance, we are not hoarding so-called ‘elegant moments,’ but rather curating a collection for ourselves. We must choose the things in which to partake and which others we will let pass by.

All too often in modern contexts, status and ideas of what’s cool or fashionable seem to be about accumulating massive quantities of extremely expensive and supposedly exclusive things. Exclusivity does not necessarily dictate the value of something, nor does grandeur have any direct correlation to quality. With consumption and mass marketed ‘luxury’ goods on the rise, true luxury and true taste is about the things we choose to omit rather than include. This may sound backwards, but I think there has got to be something to it.

Rather than flaunting branded goods, and ordering expensive things at restaurants while acting like it is nothing, it is the discretion rather than displays of wealth that matter here. Presumably anyone can come into money in one way or another, but taste and refinement take time, effort, and personal investment to cultivate, and are really paths we walk rather than goals we achieve.

To clarify though, I’m not advocating some sort of ascetic minimalism, just some thoughtful discretion. And this discretion is where each of us gets the opportunity to develop our own sense of style. If it were in the end all about he who has the most, then there would be no opportunity for difference or individuality. I would never go as far to suggest that there is one standard of elegance, and that one man could ever objectively be named more elegant than all others. We each cultivate those things which we value, and herein lies the true beauty of elegance – it is something motivated from within and displayed without, not the other way around.