The house has gone quiet again.
I love silence. And the silence of a new year carries a particular kind of stillness. So I sit at my desk and open a blank page. My world is turning white.
That is exactly how many hang in my wardrobe. My entire capsule wardrobe has, almost without my noticing, transformed into her shades. From cream to butter to soft beige. I have come to understand that white carries a quality the styling guides never mention. It does not ask you to prove anything each day. When I look at a row of white shirts in the morning, I do not stand before the wardrobe wondering who I shall be today. I already know. And I must tell you — it is strangely liberating. And quietly addictive.
Cloud Dancer Pantone
Pantone’s colour of the year for 2026 is Cloud Dancer. It is not just any white. It is balanced. Neither cold, nor too warm. Cloud Dancer holds the softness I had been seeking in white for years. There is something restful in it. Something quiet.
In interiors, it lets materials speak in their own language. It allows wood to stay wood, and linen to soften with time. To me, it recalls the days when not everything had to gleam to be considered beautiful. I suspect it carries me, in this very moment, somewhere back into childhood. And it is, I think, what gave my newsletter its name.
Sometimes we lose ourselves in the noise of our own — and worse, of others — expectations, and in a pace that was never really ours. We look outwards for answers, in new things, in further layers and colours, hoping to cover an emptiness. But true peace arrives only in the moment we dare simply to be — in stillness and in simplicity. When we allow ourselves to live as ourselves, in our own rhythm, by our own measure.
For me, white is not merely a colour. It is a space that allows me to take a deep breath and return to what is essential. It is a conscious choice. And I have a sense that, in this clarity, I have found the way back to something that was always there — only I had set it aside, for a good few years. I do not blame myself for that time. It was learning. It was investment, and it was devotion. Devoted, in the most beautiful way it could have been — to my daughter.
Some chapters have nothing to do with the outside world. They are shaped by our own self. The more these seasons alternate, the more I understand: this is not progress. It is return. And sometimes return is precisely what we need in order to move forward. And so, just now, I am sitting at my writing desk, in a long white shirt, in the soft warm light, with a ceramic cup of ceremonial cacao held in my hands. I hear the silence. I feel the calm in my soul. And I am writing.
The first piece of this world I have decided to bring into being. A world that, in its clarity beneath the white, opens a new path for me. A path towards slowing down. Towards the simplicity of being. Towards a new chapter — one that belongs to the midday of life, and one I intend to inhabit fully. Becoming, in essence, who I have always been, and who I am again becoming. A path that runs through writing, through a way of living that, for me, is becoming an art. The art of conscious living.
For me, white is femininity. Gentleness. Slowing down, and sometimes stopping altogether. It is the place from which I wish to create.
For beneath the white, we remain exposed. In complete honesty, without masks.
Warmly,
Nicolette xx