For our fall  issue, and on the heels of Paris Fashion Week and Highsnobiety’s Not In Paris activation, we asked a handful of writers and designers to give us a short essay –– or prose poem or something in between –– about something they found in Paris that changed them. Could be an article of clothing. Could be a phrase. Could be a meal. For Eileen Myles, it was language. For Arisa White, it was a dress. Natasha Stagg wrote about a perfect tee shirt. Ryota Iwai told us about a new tea routine. And Marine Serre described a bicycle. 

The last time I was in Paris, I noticed a rack of soft white T-shirts and tank tops on a busy sidewalk. They were beautifully made with no ribbing to relax them, edged in subtle scallops and tapering slightly at the natural waist. They were on clearance for five euros, and I bought one in each style. I see now upon researching the tag that these are tops made for children but in larger sizes, which is likely why they hadn’t sold at regular price, which is, on a company website, fifty euros.

I was staying at a friend-of-a friend’s very decorated pied-à-terre in the 7th before moving to a bare hotel room with a single candle-shaped lamp above the closet, in the 6th. It was when I went for lunch at a small Greek diner that I got the call I’d been dreading; sad news from home which required that I return early. I quickly paid my check and left. The sunlight after a cloudy week was like a sympathetic smile from someone I barely knew. I climbed the stairs to my room and lay face down on the bed. It began to rain again. 

The next flight home was not until the following day. I packed my things and wandered but all the stores were closed, even the ones that said they were open. The sky and the open water were the same color gray; I felt bell-like, a clapper inside me ringing out loneliness as I tried to get out of tourists’ photos; even as friends in that city and in others were busy finding ways to look after me, small and squinting, not aware I was wearing something meant for a child. 

I met someone on the Pont Neuf that night. My life was about to change anyway, and I may as well throw it all the way in a direction, I supposed. We embraced with a warmth that was momentous, unmooring. Others had given their condolences, but this one was different, more urgent yet unfamiliar: someone was poised to catch me had I tried to jump.

I wear the white T-shirt and tank top often. Drop-off laundering hasn’t diminished their character, shape, or color in almost a year. They are two of my favorite items of clothing, not because they represent a bright moment before a dark one, really, but because they are just perfect, the type of little things you expect from Paris after years of reading about its effortless chicness, tragic endings, and clandestine meetings on a bridge.