The Best Advice I've Ever Heard

Plus: A fashion spy at a French wedding (me)

I’ve been thinking about woman-to-woman advice and its inordinate value recently.

It started when I had dinner with a friend who used to be a sort of informal mentor to me, when I was in my early twenties and needed it most. She was in her early thirties. I never asked her to help me and she never formally proposed, she just spotted me in the workplace, took me under her wing and taught me how to write better when I sounded pretentious or needed editing. I think of her often while writing and wish I’d thanked her properly at the time.

The other night, when I saw this friend, it struck me how our age gap had narrowed: she’s not even a decade older after all. Our conversation got me thinking of how lucky I’d been to befriend a wise, witty and brutally honest thirty-something when I was 22. What could be more valuable than some no-BS steering with zero ulterior motives?

The trouble is the older woman needs to have both the time and the will to help. Chances are, when she does offer an invaluable gem, she’s not going to make a powerpoint presentation for you. It’s worth keeping your ears pricked or these tidbits could fly over your head unnoticed. Now that I’m the thirty something with more bills to pay, children to feed, career to develop, a long-term relationship to maintain, and friends at similar stages not to neglect, the idea of doing what this woman did for me sounds frankly exhausting, particularly as I have a daughter of my own to raise.

Still, I’d be nowhere, work-wise without her advice, and gems I’ve been lucky enough to catch from other women’s mouths over the years. Of course, I could take them or leave them. But much of the below I did end up taking because I’ve always been fascinated by the lives of others. I was also lucky to live in four different countries in the decade I went from age 18 to 28. I forced myself to meet a lot of people, and to take them in and process their points of view, even if I hated what they were saying.

You may hate what I’m saying below. Some of it took me years to digest, having provoked annoyance or misunderstanding in my younger self. Some of it is just basic aesthetic advice. Still, these are the brutal truths that’ve helped me most.

& Further down: a different kind of advice, I guess: French wedding dressing inspiration, sleuthed, ID’d, and documented just for you!