Home is Where Food and Fashion Lives
by Elena Chen
About a year ago my partner brought up the idea of wanting to move back to his home country. It just so happens that he’s French and his friends and family are in Paris. Of all the places in the world, Paris. I felt this suspiciously serendipitous opportunity as both a source of excitement and worry. Can I really thrive in a country where I don’t speak the language? Is it really worth it to uproot my just-about-to-be-something life in LA? How about this relationship, what if it all falls apart, me in a foreign place, AGAIN, with no friends or family, and visa problems? I was just getting into some kind of groove in LA with my small crochet/knit business and was making contacts with other local creators.
Despite this, J, my partner, pointed out acutely that we both did not fit in here. The progress I was making in the fiber arts world was matched by a rather disillusioning and deflating reality that all the things we loved about LA were not going to cut it for us in the long-run. For example, the weather is beautiful. We love being outdoors. We want to have a dog. Great climate for gardening. Amazing diversity of good food options. YET: we don’t drive and want to be able to walk to places. We bike to commute. We haven’t really made any friends we feel we can call close/good friends. We align more closely with the values in Europe. What’s comforting is that in Paris, there are also great options for food.
Whilst I can’t really answer those earlier questions I posed, what I do know is that Paris is beautiful. It’s just one of those despicably gorgeous places. Like Florence. Or Copenhagen (okay, that might be a bias of mine but I stand by it). It has always been a distant dream of mine to be able to live in Paris, to speak French, and to be immersed in art and culture. I also know, however, after moving so much in my 20’s, that my idealistic and naive approach that I led most of my life with was not going to be enough.
When I was 12, our family moved from Hong Kong to Shanghai. I got the idea of adventure from “The Perfect Man” after watching Hilary Duff’s character move from state to state in the US. Being the new person actually did suck. Navigating all the nationality-based cliques at my new school and their hidden hierarchies was bizarre (international schools would provide complex material for ethnographic research). When I finally adjusted 3 years later, I only had two more years with my new life before it would become my old life. In the next few years to come, I would have moved to New York, London and back to Shanghai. Being adventurous, however, was no match for the pragmatism that is required to deal with the bureaucracies of visa applications and job hunting.
Two years ago, I relocated to LA to be closer to my sister and evade the web of visa issues and COVID-19. I finally got my driver’s license (although I haven’t driven since I got it), visited Death Valley, and started crocheting. It’s been such an eye-opening experience seeing the world in this way and I wouldn’t change it for anything. It has also been difficult at times, extremely difficult at others, despite being very enriching. There was a lot of instability. Going through this when I was barely a formed human, meant that I had very little with which to ground myself. Two things stuck with me even when the language, culture, house and people seemed to be shifting continuously around me — Fashion and Food.
When I lived in Shanghai again after leaving for university, I could not express myself in Mandarin nearly as precisely as I could in English. So I used fashion and style to say the things I could not in words. It was a way of being heard by making myself seen. I was trying to send a message equally to others around me as to myself - that I would express myself regardless of where I was. I would hide, many times, behind clothing that would assimilate me to my surroundings and camouflage me into the crowd. Even then, there would be a clue, in an accessory or the color of my eyeshadow, that I wanted to do more than just fit in. If fashion was my mode of expression, food was my place of comfort. McDonald’s in Hong Kong houses my ultimate Sunday Breakfast. A fry up will be my go to on a hungover morning. Shanghai scallion oil noodles by the side of the road on plastic stools with my friends is a memory filled with laughter. A croissant as an afternoon snack because layered in that buttery richness is a me who has forgotten all my troubles. I would opt for fresh handmade pasta with fresh pesto for dinner along with a hearty clam chowder but that might just be asking for too much. I feel so very lucky that I have so many foods that I see as comfort food. Whereas I struggle to pinpoint or describe where home is for me, when I eat my comfort foods I know I am home.
Some dishes remind me of a time when I was younger, in a certain city, with those familiar faces. Other flavors that are unpredictable and bold bring me out of my comfort zone and this too gives me solace. Moving around this frequently, I have whittled my belongings down to the most essential: The clothes that mean so much to me and a map pinned with good food spots. In some ways, they anchor me. They are consistent. I have to get dressed everyday and I have to eat three times a day. They are ritualized. Each day, I go through a process of deciding how I want to express myself and what foods I want to be cooking and eating that day. In these repetitions are opportunities for improvisation, creativity and exploration and I would harness that as much as I could.
When we visited Paris for six weeks in the summer of 2022 without knowing it, I had made a rubric in my subconscious of how I would gauge the city. Its livability, for me, actually depended on a simple 2 x 1 mental table. Paris vs. food and fashion. Although I documented less the fashion, it was clear on my trip that this city had food. In the bag. Despite the challenges that will undoubtedly ensue from living in a new place with its new customs, new language(s) and new people, I am consoled by those willing to be themselves in the way they dress and the way they eat. I am on an ever-evolving quest in search of home but at least in Paris I know I will find another part of me buried in its food and fashion. It may not have the best weather and it might be harder to live with a dog in a much smaller apartment but we will be surrounded by family and friends. We will bike everywhere and we will be in a city that deeply values art and culture. When things get hard, when I’m confused or insecure because I can’t speak the language well or because I’m still trying to break through the fiber arts world there, I’ll put on an all black outfit and go for some good ramen.
