Nikos Kazantzakis, in the Prologue to Καπετάν Μιχάλης, wrote:
"Όταν άρχισα, τώρα στα γεράματα, να γράφω τον Καπετάν Μιχάλη, ο κρυφός σκοπός μου ήταν τούτος: να σώσω, ντύνοντάς το με λέξες, τ' όραμα του κόσμου όπως το πρωταντίκρισαν και το δημιούργησαν τα παιδικά μου μάτια."
"When I began, now in my old age, to write 'Captain Michalis', my secret purpose was this: to save, through my words, the vision of the world as my childhood eyes created it."
He had a lifetime, a revolution, an entire island to save.
I had a monthly deadline and an agency asking for content.
This started as a suggestion. Not mine.
Our design and communication agency thought WhiteBoutiques should have a monthly letter — something with a name and a face behind it.
I said yes because it felt like something I should do. An obligation, dressed up as content.
I am not an editor. I am not a writer. I never trained to be either.
What I had was something else — a simple habit of noticing things.
So, once a month, I tried anyway.
Two years later, I can see the thread — the same concern, dressed differently every month.
A refusal to let anything be reduced to a script. Not femininity. Not Christmas. Not a Tuesday morning. Not even summer.
I never sat down and decided this would be the theme. It just kept resurfacing, because it's the thing I actually worry about — that we're all slowly agreeing to perform versions of ourselves instead of living them.
TWENTY LETTERS LATER, IT TURNS OUT I ONLY HAD ONE THING TO SAY: STOP PERFORMING IT. JUST LIVE IT. I JUST KEPT DRESSING THAT IN DIFFERENT CLOTHES EACH TIME.
And then, something I didn't expect.
People I've never met, stopping me in our own stores.
Recognizing me — not as the owner, but as "the one who writes the letters."
Not polite nods. Real reactions. Authentic smiles.
No agency asked them to feel that. No one suggested it to them, the way someone once suggested it to me.
THAT'S WHEN THE OBLIGATION STOPPED BEING ONE.
Here's the part that still makes me smile privately.
In my actual life — the one without a byline — I am not a communicator at all.
I don't call when I should call. I let good news sit unsaid for days. I've been at the same table with someone I loved and said less than I meant to, more than once.
And yet, once a month, I sit down and hand total strangers my private thoughts. On purpose. In public.
So maybe this is my own kind of reclaiming.
Not a beach. Not a season. A Tuesday task, once a month, that someone else assigned me, that I quietly took back and made mine.
Disassemble it, and you're left with almost nothing: one habit of noticing, one hour of honesty, one deadline I no longer resent.
Which means — like the olive tree, the vine, the boat — with just that much, I can keep rebuilding it. Every month. For as long as there's something left undressed, waiting for words.
Near the end of that same prologue to Καπετάν Μιχάλης, Kazantzakis asks:
"Δε θα πεθάνει λοιπόν ποτέ η ράτσα ετούτη;"
"Will these people, then, never die?"
I don't have his war, or his island, or his certainty. But I've spent two years writing about clothes and honesty in the same breath, so here's my answer, for whatever it's worth:
Yes. It will never die.
As long as we're all still authentic.
Not performing. Not scripted. Not dressed for someone else's approval — just actually here, actually ourselves, actually saying the thing.
That's the only condition. It's always been the only condition.
- GF