Lookbook - Canal Ln

Issue 1 Spring/Summer

For when I age I want it to be beautiful. Simply so, nothing less, but yet nothing more either.The skin of my palm shall be worn coarse from offering it's grasp to someone in need of its security, as I was. As I still am. I am lucky that the one who offered me his is still by my side.

The creases that runalong my forehead andaround the edges of my mouth will not cause me sadness when I catch my reflection in the window of my grown child's diningroom. I will look at my face - a face I so pain- fully scrutinised and unjustly hated in my youth

and trace thesepaths on my skin, beyond my hairline, to a moment; one ofpure contentmentwith my first love, his fingers sodelicately running through my Sunday morning hair as the sunrose in front of us.

I will smile at the glass, and recall how I awoke this morning, with those same fingers placed upon the small of my now wrinkled back.And as I tread upstairs your eyes will, I am sure, fall upon my legs. They are spotted with earthly brownmoles from careless episodes spent sprawled upon thesands of our favourite beach.

Gone is the shapely curve of my calf, and in the place of what was once the intricate composition of a ballerina'sthigh now hangs a sheath of loose flesh. All that remains is the crevice where my hip dips into the beginning of my leg. And the way he adores that absurdly nuanced part of me remains the same also.

You may look at these legs and call me weak.Weak, for I am old. But I will ask you, as my lover asked me, to see my mounted years as strength.

For so long I was afraid that I would lose my beauty when I lost my youth.But my love, let me tell you: beauty is often hidden behind strength. - Amy Carver