VIVILUXE: Why Your Nice Things Should Have Fingerprints On Them

Someone, right now, has a set of “good towels” folded in their linen closet. They bought them two years ago. Maybe three. They’re beautiful—soft, expensive, the kind that made them feel like a real adult when they ordered them online at 11pm after a particularly aspirational YouTube binge.

Those towels have never touched a human body.

They’re waiting. For what, exactly? The perfect guest? A bathroom renovation? A version of life that finally feels fancy enough to deserve them?

Meanwhile, we’re using the fraying bath towel from college that’s been washed so many times it’s achieved the texture of lightly aggressive sandpaper.

This is the great tragedy of modern luxury: we’ve forgotten it’s supposed to be lived with.

The Museum We Live In

Somewhere along the way, we started treating our homes like museums of our future, better selves. The “good” china for dinner parties we never host. The fancy candles we don’t light because they’re “too pretty to burn.” The silk robe hanging in the closet, tags still on, waiting for us to become the kind of person who wears a silk robe on a random Wednesday.

We’ve confused luxury with preservation. With aspiration. With some distant, shinier version of ourselves who finally has it together enough to deserve nice things.

But here’s what actually happens: we save the beautiful objects for special occasions that never feel special enough. We protect them from life. We keep them pristine, unused, perfect—and completely pointless.

The irony? The things we actually use—the chipped mug, the worn cutting board, the blanket with the small stain we’ve stopped noticing—those become the things we love. Because they’ve participated in our lives. They have a relationship with us.

They’re not waiting for permission to exist. They already do.

The luxury of Selection - Introducing Viviluxe

We need a new definition of luxury. One that doesn’t sit in a closet waiting to be worthy.

Viviluxe is luxury that’s alive. Elegance that participates in your actual life. Beautiful things made to be used, touched, worn, shared, and occasionally stained by very good wine or the enthusiasm of existence.

It’s the opposite of precious. It’s the opposite of “saved for best.”

Viviluxe is luxury with fingerprints on it.

It’s lighting the expensive candle on a Tuesday because you’re making pasta and your kitchen deserves to feel loved. It’s using the linen napkins for a regular weeknight dinner, not because you have guests, but because you are someone worth setting a table for. It’s wearing the cashmere sweater to work from home, to walk the dog, to exist in—not saving it for an occasion impressive enough to match its price tag.

The price tag is irrelevant once you own something. The only question that matters is: does using this make your life more beautiful right now?

The Things That Earned Their Place

Think about the objects in your home that you actually love. Really love. The ones you reach for without thinking.

They probably aren’t perfect anymore. The wooden spoon is worn smooth from stirring a thousand dinners. The throw blanket has a permanent place on the couch because it’s been used so thoroughly it’s shaped itself to your life. The mug that fits your hands exactly right has a small chip you barely see anymore because it’s too useful to replace.

These things have patina. Not the fake, manufactured kind you see in design magazines, but real evidence of life lived. Of meals cooked and coffee drunk and cold evenings made warmer.

They’ve earned their place in your life by being part of your life.

This is what luxury should be doing. Not sitting in protective packaging. Not waiting in a drawer for a future that never arrives. Not performing the idea of elegance while never actually experiencing it.

Luxury should be working.

Permission to Use the Good Stuff

Here’s your official permission slip, delivered with the authority of people who’ve wasted far too many years saving things “for later”:

Use the good towels. Today. They’re towels. Their purpose is to dry you. Let them do their job.

Light the candle. Yes, the expensive one. Candles exist to be burned. A pristine, unlit candle is just decorative wax having an identity crisis.

Wear the silk. Sleep on the good sheets. Use the fancy soap. Pour the wine in the crystal, not because someone’s coming over, but because you live here and you deserve to drink from something beautiful.

Set the table with the nice plates on a random Thursday because dinner tastes better when it’s treated like it matters.

Your regular life is the special occasion. This moment, right now, is the one worth celebrating. Not some hypothetical future where everything is perfect and you’ve finally earned the right to use your own possessions.

What Happens When You Actually Use Things

A funny thing happens when you stop saving luxury for later: your life starts feeling more luxurious.

Not because you bought more. Not because anything changed externally. But because you’re using the luxurious stuff, finally experiencing the things you already have. You’re letting them do what they were designed to do—enhance your daily life, not gather dust while promising future enhancement.

The linen napkins get softer with every wash. They become yours in a way they never could while folded pristinely in a drawer.

The fancy leather bag you love now develops character. The wooden cutting board bears the marks of meals prepared with care. The cashmere gets those tiny pills that prove it’s been worn and loved, not protected and ignored.

This is Viviluxe. Luxury that shows evidence of living. Beauty that isn’t afraid of being touched.

Things that know they’re loved because they’re used.

The Question That Changes Everything

Before you save something “for good,” ask yourself: What am I waiting for?

What future occasion could possibly be more important than the life you’re living right now? What hypothetical dinner party is more valuable than tonight’s meal? What guest deserves your nice towels more than you do?

The answer, almost always, is nothing and no one.

You are the person worth using the good stuff for. Your regular, imperfect, beautifully ordinary Tuesday is the special occasion. The dinner you’re making for yourself or your family tonight is the event worth honoring with intention and beauty.

Not because you’ve achieved something. Not because you’ve earned it through productivity or perfection. But because you’re alive, and life is worth living to the fullest, and the whole point of beautiful things is to make being alive feel more beautiful.

Start Small

You don’t have to revolutionize your entire approach to possessions overnight. Start with one thing.

Use the fancy hand soap this week. The one you’ve been saving. Just use it. Notice how it makes washing your hands feel like a small ritual instead of a functional obligation.

Or light that special handcrafted candle you bought in a specialty store in the 2nd Arrondissement in Paris. Light it tonight. Yes, the one that’s been sitting there for two years looking decorative. Let it do its actual job.

Wear the dress shirt you save for special occasions. Sleep on the good pillowcase. Use that expensive chef’s knife you bought to cook tonight’s meal. Drink your morning coffee from the mug that makes you happy instead of the random one that happens to be clean.

Choose one beautiful thing you own and give it permission to participate in your life.

Then notice what happens. How it changes the quality of the moment. How something shifts when you treat your regular life like it deserves a bit of ceremony, a touch of elegance, a moment of “this matters.”

Because it does matter. Today matters. This dinner, this evening, this absolutely ordinary moment—it all matters because it’s the only life we actually have.

The Practice of Viviluxe

At Épanvie, we’re practicing something simple: we’re using our lives instead of waiting for them to begin.

We’re lighting candles on Wednesday. Setting tables for ourselves. Wearing the things we love instead of protecting them from the living that would give them meaning.

We’re choosing Viviluxe—luxury that participates, that shows up, that gets a little worn and a lot loved.

Because pristine is pretty, but patina is proof of a life well-lived.

What will you use today that you’ve been saving?

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This week at Épanvie

We finally used the fancy chef’s knife to make dinner and the linen napkins for Tuesday pasta. They got a small olive oil stain. We couldn’t be happier about it.

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