Airport glamour and the frequent flyer

also I took a little trip to Malaga

Love notes from Siel is a newsletter about love, writing, and travel from me, Siel.

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Dear friend —

What do you wear to the airport?

Or: Why are airport outfits a thing? Despite being a transient non-place, the airport’s sprung its own fashion protocols. Vogue and Glamour sell fantasies of how we could or should look walking to our terminals: glamorous, sleek, effortlessly stylish. It’s a look that is especially tough to pull off if you’re bleary and barely awake because you booked the cheap flight taking off at the crack of dawn. 

Covid first made us hermity and slob-like, trapped in our homes with no one to judge our looks, but now performative living is back with a vengeance. There’s even performative hydration now, I learned last week —

People who actually travel a lot rarely look glamorous at the airport, as anyone who’s looked around an airport knows. Among the most frequent travelers are nomads with bare bones, basics-only wardrobes and retired folks whose days of staying on top of fashion trends have sailed. 

Last month I took a flight to Malaga for a weekend getaway. In the airport, I wore a nondescript T-shirt and jeans, plus the big black puffy jacket I always travel with because airports and planes are always freezing, except when they’re sweltering. Both my boyfriend and I carried only a backpack each, which makes travel a lot easier and cheaper. No extra fees, no checking in at the airline counter, no jostling in line to get in the plane first while there’s still space in the overhead bin. You just wait until the line’s gone, saunter onto the plane, then scoot your backpack under the seat in front of you and relax. 

Of course, if you travel with just a backpack, you won’t have room to pack a perfect vacation wardrobe —

Malaga is a chill beach city with a long, intense history. First came the Phoenicans, who were conquered by the Romans, who were conquered by the Visigoths. Then came the Islamic era  — followed by the Catholic monarchs, who took over in the late 1400s. All those cultures are still part of the city. There’s a huge cathedral, a popular hammam, a first century Roman theater and the Alcazabar, a castle-fortress complex built during Muslim rule. 

Most famously, though, Malaga is the birthplace of Picasso. Though his family moved away when he was still a kid, his name’s all over the city. There’s the Museo Picasso and the Museo Casa Natal de Picasso — plus his works are in many of the other couple dozen museums in town, his image is in every souvenir shop.

Sometimes travel can seem like a to-do list, and in many European cities, the list is strikingly similar: museum, park, architectural ruin. A plaza or two, a couple major shopping streets. On the one hand there’s the urge to try and do off-the-beaten-path stuff; on the other hand you don’t want to miss out on the popular attractions when you’re only there a few days —

Malaga did feel like a nice break from Barcelona: warm and sunny with a bright, open, summery feel. We ate espetos and loafed on the beach and ran around town. I didn’t drink enough water, performatively or otherwise, got a little dehydrated and woozy, then drank a ton of water to compensate. 

Everything was fine! On my way back I wore the same outfit I wore there, and I may wear the same later this month when I visit Berlin for a week — a long-enough time that, hopefully, I can fit in a few odd, non-touristy things in. If you have tips, please share.

Love,

Siel

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Waiting for espetos in Malaga

Three links you may love — obsession edition:

1. Hyperpolyglots who speak 12+ languages. “An extreme language learner has a more-than-random chance of being a gay, left-handed male on the autism spectrum, with an autoimmune disorder, such as asthma or allergies.”

2. An overvaxxer who get 217+ covid shots. “For several weeks in early 2022, he received two shots nearly every day. He seems to have had a strong preference for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but he also got at least one shot of AstraZeneca and Sanofi-GSK and, of course, Johnson & Johnson.”

3. An obsessive but contactless fling. Anna Holmes recounts her experience on Feeld: “I spent months in an all-consuming affair with a man who refused to meet me in person. How did this happen?”

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