For a long time, I lived for a future version of myself. I was always planning and preparing, always trying to do everything properly. I didn’t know how to enjoy my life as I was living it, or how to sit inside the journey while it was still unfolding. It felt quite literally impossible. I thought control was maturity, certainty was safety, and that if I could just hold everything tightly enough then absolutely nothing could go wrong.

For a while, that grip did offer reassurance. Life felt predictable and I felt as though I was doing it the right way. But holding on only works until you start relying on everything going to plan. When it does not, you begin to see how little control you actually have, and how much of your identity has been built around managing the uncontrollable.

Looking back, that unravelling taught me something simple but important. You cannot control outcomes, only how you respond to them. The things I had fixated on for years never arrived in the way I imagined, and when something began to feel off, I realised I needed to take responsibility for my choices instead of waiting for life to happen to me.

So I let go of control and deliberately went the other way.

I quit a perfectly stable job to become a chalet girl in Courchevel 1850, swapping certainty and a clear trajectory for something far more uncertain. It made very little sense on paper, but it felt richer in practice. I wanted to feel my life again, even if that meant walking away from what looked sensible.

For a while, carpe diem became the phrase I lived by, and in many ways it did exactly what I needed it to do. It pushed me to say yes more often, to move, to travel, and to leap rather than hesitate. Over the next two years I travelled to more than fifteen countries, lived in Croatia, Amsterdam and Paris, and lived out of a suitcase. By loosening my grip on control, I found myself more present inside my own life.

From the outside, it probably looked hedonistic, as though I was chasing pleasure for its own sake. People often said to me “you’re always on holiday”, and I felt a quiet need to explain that what I was doing was far more deliberate than it appeared.

I wasn’t just escaping my life, I was living it and building it at the same time. I was working and creating all whilst paying close attention to how it all felt. I was developing a relationship with my own taste in real time, not taste as status or aesthetics, but taste as sensitivity. I began noticing what genuinely fuelled me and what quietly drained me, what felt exciting in the moment but left me oddly empty afterwards.

I knew, for example, that I didn’t love cleaning toilets or making beds, but I loved what my ski season gave me. I loved the freedom, being in rooms with people I could learn from, commuting to work in a gondola rather than a packed tube, the ability to earn good money and the time to enjoy it, and the creative energy that came from documenting it all. Those details mattered far more than the job title itself.

I could easily have done five ski seasons by now if my chalet manager hadn’t said to me, very simply, “don’t do the same thing twice”. She was right. I did not want to keep replaying the same chapter just because it was exciting. I wanted to take what I loved from that experience and build something that could last.

Learning what actually felt good

Straight after that ski season, I moved to Croatia to create content for The Yacht Week. If you are not familiar with it, The Yacht Week is essentially hedonism packaged into a week long sailing trip with people from all around the world. It’s pretty much a floating festival.

People come for a week, but I was there for sixteen weeks because my role required me to be fully immersed in the experience. Creating iPhone content meant I could not observe from a distance. I had to live it from the point of view of the guest while also representing the brand and shaping how the experience felt.

I went to every party because that was part of the job, and while I enjoyed myself, I never fully lost myself in it. I was still working, still showing up with intention, and still aware that I was responsible for how the brand was being felt and perceived.

It was intense in ways I had not anticipated. Constant social interaction, late nights, eating out every day, and a social battery that never had the chance to switch off. I used to say “I just want a salad” because honestly in all the excess, I was craving a bit of simplicity.

Not because I was ungrateful or not enjoying myself. I was deeply grateful and aware of how fortunate I was to be there. But even in the middle of excess, my body and mind were quietly signalling what they needed.

With no one structuring my time for me, I had to find a rhythm that I could sustain, and that process taught me more than I expected. Like my ski season, it clarified both what I enjoyed and what I did not want forever. I loved the people, the travel, the creativity, and the absurdity of calling travelling and partying work, but I knew it could not be my entire life.

Choosing pleasure with discernment

At the time, I did not yet have language for what was happening, but something had shifted. I was not rejecting pleasure, and I was not chasing it either. I was learning how to enjoy my life with discernment by choosing what genuinely enriched me and stepping away from what quietly numbed me.

That way of living is what I later came to call Tasteful Hedonism.

Once I understood that distinction, everything began to change. When you choose pleasure with discernment, escape stops being necessary because your life no longer feels like something you need a break from. Instead, you begin building something that supports enjoyment rather than undermines it. You allow ambition and joy to coexist.

I still ask myself the same question. If I’m selling a yacht experience, why am I not on a yacht? If I’m selling a ski experience, why am I not in the mountains?

That question is what pushed me to start my own agency.

I had always wanted to work for myself, even if I had not yet worked out what that would look like. I had already been freelancing alongside my role and had used up all my annual leave. So I started looking for a way to keep working with the brand while creating space for other projects.

Eventually, I pitched the idea of taking my role freelance. Not because I wanted less responsibility, but because I knew I would do better work if I was trusted with my time. The work was never meant to fit neatly into a nine to five. It was meant to be lived.

They did not understand it at the time, but I did it anyway.

I was already freelancing for a fashion design agency that paid me more than my salary, and that final sense of self belief gave me the push I needed to set up Trendie Social, which has since grown into the wider Trendie ecosystem.

Staying in the middle

I don’t live by a rigid plan anymore. I trust my ability to notice what enriches me, what numbs me, and when I start drifting toward either extreme. Trendie acts as an anchor.

That is what I did not know how to do before.

Choosing pleasure with discernment taught me how to enjoy what is in front of me without constantly needing to escape it, and how to build something that supports that enjoyment rather than working against it.

I used to live by the phrase carpe diem, but over time it has shifted into something quieter and more personal.

Carpe your life.

Carpe diem is about the moment. It’s a leap. It’s reactive and brilliant for shaking you out of paralysis. But moments on their own don’t sustain you. They need somewhere to land.

Carpe your life is about building the thing that holds them. Making the highs last. Not chasing the next one but creating a life where enjoyment isn’t something you escape into, it’s something you already live inside.

Trendie grew out of this way of living, not as a brand idea but as a practice and a reminder to stay present, to trust your taste, and to build a life you genuinely want to be in.

I have lived at both extremes of total control and total surrender, and what I eventually realised was that the in-between is the sweet spot and a pretty great place to be. It’s the place where life feels good now while still making sense later, and where you do not have to choose between living fully and building something real.

That is where I am, and that is what I am building.

On self-doubt, embracing the chaos and learning to back yourself.

January is a weird one. And on top of that, being an entrepreneur in January is even weirder.

As someone who doesn’t have a perfect plan, and never really has, I feel the pressure more than any other month to suddenly have one. I think I’ve said “I need to get my life together” most days. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes not.

And don’t get me wrong, January does have its benefits. I really am learning to enjoy it and to embrace it. It allows you to pause. It forces you to look at things properly. To re-align, to prioritise, and to ask what you actually want to keep and what you’re ready to let go of.

But with that comes a lot of noise.

January has a way of amplifying certainty. Suddenly it feels like everyone around you is fully optimised and ready to go. New routines. New goals. New plans spoken out loud before they’ve even settled. You notice it everywhere. In conversations. Online. In the questions people ask.

And you’re still figuring out what you’re even doing, let alone where it’s going.

Yesterday I had one of those days where everything clicked. One of those days where you think, yes, I’m onto something. This makes total sense. I feel ready for it.

And then today I’m like… who do I actually think I am.

Welcome to the life of an entrepreneur.

That contrast is usually where the self doubt comes uninvited.

The reality is that I have no one telling me what to do. And yes, that’s a great thing in so many ways. It’s the freedom I wanted. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t also a struggle at times.

As an entrepreneur, you need the discipline of a manager, the patience of a long term thinker, and the self trust of someone willing to move without constant reassurance.

Some days that feels empowering. Other days it just feels heavy.

January makes that weight more noticeable. There is no straight path to this life. That’s part of the appeal and why I chose it in the first place. It’s fluid. It changes. You’re allowed to evolve without permission.

But it also means there’s no structure resetting itself for you. No objectives handed down. No clear KPIs. No sense of being folded back into something that’s already moving. It is all on you.

The art of backing yourself.

Sometimes I do wish someone else could back me other than myself. Someone to sit next to the idea, or quite literally inside my brain, and say, yes, this makes total sense. Keep going.

The reality is, wanting that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in what I’m doing. I think it just means I’m human. Most paths come with built in reassurance. This one doesn’t.

Self promoting myself, or giving myself a pay rise, doesn’t quite land the same as someone else doing it for you. It’s like clapping for yourself. Necessary, but it never quite hits the same.

So you learn to move without it. At first that feels unsettling. Then, slowly, it becomes a quieter kind of self trust.

And yes, people do love to romanticise entrepreneurship. But just like anything in life, it’s mostly made up of quiet days. Small decisions. A lot of sitting with uncertainty and not really knowing if you’re doing it “right”.

This is also fun. And it is a privilege. I’m aware that getting to sit with these questions at all is not something everyone gets. Knowing that doesn’t make it easier, but it does stop me taking it for granted.

Some days I wish someone else could carry the responsibility with me. Other days I recognise how rare it is to have this much ownership over my own life. Both can be true.

So yes, January is strange. The doubt is there. The pressure to have it all figured out feels louder than ever. But even when it feels pretty uncomfortable at times, there’s something very alive about it.

And honestly, I’m going to make them coexist either way.

The hardest part of living this way is not the living. It’s the explaining.

The Explaining

I don’t know how many times someone has looked at my life and quietly drawn the wrong conclusion. She’s always on holiday. She doesn’t have a real job. Must be nice. And I get it. From the outside, what I do doesn’t look like work in the way people expect it to. There’s no office. No commute. No neat job title that settles the conversation in three seconds.

When people ask what I do, there’s usually a pause after I answer. A head tilt. The polite silence that says, right… but what do you actually do?

The truth is I work constantly. I think about what I’m building every single day. I wake up with ideas and go to sleep with questions. But I also had lunch outside today. I also booked a trip last week because it felt right. I also lit a candle on a Tuesday for no reason other than I wanted to.

And somehow that’s the part people notice. Not the work. The lunch.

The Two Extremes

I think we’ve been trained to recognise ambition only when it looks like suffering. Long hours. Burnout. Sacrifice. A packed calendar with no gaps. If you’re not visibly grinding, you’re not visibly serious. And if you appear to be enjoying yourself, you must not be working hard enough.

On the other side, enjoyment only seems to look legitimate when it’s been earned. The holiday after the deadline. The dinner after the promotion. The trip after the big quarter. Pleasure as a reward, not a rhythm. Something you cash in rather than something you live inside.

Most people I know swing between the two. Grinding until they need to escape and then escaping until the guilt kicks in. I’ve done both. I’ve sat at a desk counting the hours until Friday. I’ve also spent sixteen weeks on yachts in Croatia wondering why I was craving a salad and a quiet evening.

Neither felt like mine. One was too tight. The other was too loose. Both left me reaching for the next thing instead of being in the thing I was already in.

The Middle

What I wanted was something in between. One where I could build something meaningful without losing my life to it. Where enjoyment wasn’t the break from work but the texture of it. Where I could be ambitious and present in the same breath.

And I don’t think that’s lazy. I think it’s actually harder than either extreme, because there’s no script for it.

Hustle has a script. Wake up early. Outwork everyone. Grind now, live later. It’s simple and it’s easy to follow because someone else already laid it out.

Escape has a script too. Quit the job. Book the flight. Find yourself somewhere else. It’s romantic and it’s easy to follow because it feels like freedom even when it’s just another loop.

The middle doesn’t have a script. There’s no one to copy. No aesthetic for it. No playbook that tells you how to build something real from a café while also being fully present in the conversation you’re having. You just have to feel your way through it. And I think most people would rather follow someone else’s script than trust themselves to figure it out without one.

The Filter

That’s what I think actually makes this way of living uncomfortable for some people. Not that it doesn’t work. But that it requires you to trust your own judgement about what a good life looks like. And that means being okay with the fact that some people won’t understand it.

The friends who chose the grind look at you and wonder if you’re serious enough. The friends who chose escape wonder why you’re still building at all. You don’t quite fit in either conversation. And at first that can feel quite lonely.

But over time it becomes a filter. The people who get it get it immediately. They don’t need the explanation. They recognise the rhythm because they’re looking for it themselves. And the people who don’t get it were probably never going to, no matter how many times you tried to justify a Tuesday lunch.

The Shift

I stopped explaining. That was the shift for me. Not because I don’t care what people think, but because the explaining was costing me more energy than the living. Every time I softened what I do to make it sound more reasonable, I moved a little further away from the thing I was actually building.

Trendie is what happened when I stopped trying to translate my life into other people’s frameworks and just started building my own. Not a rejection of ambition. Not pure hedonism. Something in between. Intentional, felt, and built to last.

I still don’t have a neat job title, and I don’t plan on having just one. My work sits between brands, content, and lived experience. I build things through how I live, what I notice, and what I care about. It’s not conventional, and it’s not always tidy or easy to explain, but it’s intentional. And it’s something I’m still figuring out as I go.

Trendie isn’t for everyone. It’s for people who care about what they’re building and how they’re living. Who want both and are quietly refusing to believe they have to pick.

This is me figuring it out. And inviting others to do the same.

Stay Trendie x

I thought f*ck it. Life’s short. The plan was to just get out there, and the rest I’d just have to figure out. And yes, I’ll admit it, I absolutely had the Chalet Girl movie expectation in my head. It wasn’t delusion, just a bit of optimism in all the chaos.

The lessons were actually pretty uncomfortable to learn at the time, but invaluable. And they’re still the ones I live by now.

Here are the big ones…

1. Everyone has a “worry hole”

That was one of the first things I noticed. I grew up thinking that people who “had it all”, genuinely had it all. But let me tell you, no matter how successful someone is, how wealthy they are, how perfect their life looks from the outside, everyone has this “worry hole”. This is something that has helped me make sense of what it is to be human. It makes us as humans a little more, well human, and it helps to remove the fluff that tried to distract us from that very thing. If we want to be scientific about it, it’s our negativity bias doing it job. Some people learn how to live with it. Others spend their entire lives trying to fill it. It made me understand early that life isn’t about eliminating worry, it’s about learning how to manage it without letting it run your life.

2. Confidence comes from doing, not thinking

This one hit me fast. Confidence is not handed to you, it’s earnt. You build confidence through positive reinforcement, by acting before you feel ready. You create it through repetition, through evidence, through proving to yourself that you can handle things you didn’t think you could. The more I did, the more I collected proof that I could do it. It also something you have to maintain, it can slip away if you don’t look after it properly.

3. Hedonism is a good thing when it’s tasteful

Hedonism at its simplest is the pursuit of pleasure. When it’s intentional, not chaotic, not escapist but tasteful - it’s a good thing. To me, that means living fully without losing yourself; choosing experiences that actually mean something instead of chasing highs that don’t last; knowing when to indulge and when to pause; and letting joy be intentional, not escapist. That season taught me that pleasure doesn’t have to be destructive, and that fun doesn’t have to be shallow. If anything, the most meaningful moments were the ones I wasn’t performing for anyone. The small rituals, and the quiet moments with a coffee before the chaos began.

4. You can earn a living by living

This lesson cracked my entire idea of “work” apart. I genuinely thought life was meant to be a straight line: degree, job, climb ladder, retire, die. But working a ski season taught me that your lifestyle can become your work. That you can build a career through the way you live, the people you meet, the energy you carry, the moments you choose, the stories you create. Living isn’t something you do after work. Living can be your work, if you choose it.

5. Money still gives you problems

Just different ones. Being close to extreme wealth taught me that money solves all the small inconveniences, but very few of the big existential ones. It makes life easier, not necessarily fuller. And the problems it brings, status pressure, emptiness, comparison, loneliness, responsibility are ones people on the outside don’t see until they’re in it. That season taught me not to pedestal wealth, not to glamorise it, and not to assume it’s the finish line. It made me value taste, behaviour, character and emotional intelligence far more.

6. Don’t do the same thing twice

This became one of the most important lessons. I could have very easily done another ski season. I literally said to my chalet manager “I’ll see you next year!”. She replied and said, “don’t do the same thing twice”. And I am still so grateful that she said that because it made me stop and think. I didn’t love scrubbing toilets and making beds, but I did love what my ski season gave me. So I needed to take those lessons and actually apply them. It’s very easy to repeat a season, or anything for that matter, when it’s familiar and fun. But I learnt early that there’s a fine line between evolving and pressing replay. Doing something once for the experience is growth. Doing it twice out of comfort is avoidance. I could have gone back. I could have stayed in that loop for years. But something in me knew I needed to move forward, even if I didn’t know where I was heading.

And underneath all of it…

And underneath all of it, I did not realise at the time that those months in Courchevel were shaping the way I live now. I did not have the words then, but I was already practising the beginnings of what I now call Tasteful Hedonism®. It came through the way I paid attention, the way I chose moments that felt right rather than expected, the way I trusted myself even when nothing felt certain, and the way I cared about how life felt rather than how it looked.

Taste has always been about discernment for me. It is not about appearance. It is about sensitivity and the ability to recognise what is good for you and what is only good from a distance. Courchevel showed me that very clearly. I saw that you can have everything in the world and still feel detached. I also saw that you can have very little certainty and still feel alive, grounded, and connected. It taught me that taste is about how you carry yourself, how you treat people, how you make decisions, and how you experience your own life.

Tasteful Hedonism® grew out of that season without me knowing it. It became the only language that made sense of why I lived the way I did. I enjoyed life without losing myself. I paid attention without overthinking. I made choices that felt aligned even when they were not logical. I trusted my instincts even when I had no evidence. I found pleasure in presence rather than escape and I learnt that you can build your life without abandoning what makes you feel human.

Looking back, Courchevel gave me the first threads of all of this. It taught me that enjoyment does not have to be careless. It taught me that confidence grows from trusting your own taste. It taught me that life can feel full without becoming chaotic. And it taught me that your philosophy often lives in you long before you find the words. Tasteful Hedonism® was already there. I just had to grow into the language.

Stay Trendie®

(and your inbox whilst you’re at it.)

But the joy I’m talking about doesn’t live there. It lives in the in-between. In the quiet moments when you’re still figuring it out, when nothing is certain but you keep going anyway. In the parts no one celebrates but you remember most.

I really believe that joy doesn’t just come from what you achieve. There’s a different type of joy, a slightly quieter kind, that comes from how you live while you’re achieving it.

So this is what living and building at the same time actually looks like for me. Not the philosophy. The practice.

The morning matters more than you think

I don’t have a morning routine in the way the internet wants me to. I don’t wake up at 5am. I don’t have a cold plunge. But I do protect the first hour of my day. Sometimes that’s a coffee and a walk. Sometimes that’s sitting with my thoughts before I open my laptop. Sometimes it’s breakfast that I actually sit down for rather than eating over my phone.

The point isn’t the routine. It’s the intention. If I start the day already behind, already reacting, already scrolling, the rest of the day follows that energy. If I start it slowly, even just slightly, I build better.

Work from wherever makes you feel alive

I don’t believe in the desk for the sake of the desk. Some days I work from my kitchen table. Some days from a café. Some days I take my laptop somewhere new just because the change of scenery shifts how I think.

This isn’t about being a digital nomad or making work look aesthetic. It’s about noticing that where you work affects how you work. And giving yourself permission to move when something feels stale rather than forcing productivity in an environment that’s draining you.

Say yes to the Tuesday thing

The thing that separates living and building from just building is the willingness to do something on a night that isn’t supposed to be for doing things. The Tuesday dinner. The Wednesday glass of wine. The spontaneous plan that your productive brain tells you to cancel because you should be working.

I’ve had some of my best ideas after a dinner I almost didn’t go to. I’ve made some of my most important connections at things that had nothing to do with work. The life part feeds the build part. They’re not competing. They’re the same thing.

Let some days be slow

Not every day needs to be productive. Some days I do very little and that’s fine. I used to feel guilty about slow days. I’d sit with this sense that I should be doing more, sending more emails, creating more content, moving faster.

Now I see slow days differently. They’re not wasted days. They’re the days where things settle. Where the idea you’ve been forcing finally clicks because you stopped trying to force it. Where you remember that you’re building a life, not just a business.

Stop performing progress

This is the one I’m still working on. The pull to document, share, prove. To turn every good moment into content. To make sure people can see that it’s working.

But the best parts of what I’m building are the parts no one sees. The conversation that changed my thinking. The afternoon I spent reading and didn’t post about. The slow dinner where nothing happened except I felt completely at ease in my own life.

The milestones are proof you built it. The in-between is proof you lived it. And I’d rather have both than just one.

Create more than you consume

This is a simple one but it changed everything for me. On the days where I spend more time scrolling than creating, I feel worse. Every time. On the days where I make something, write something, build something, even something small, I feel like myself.

The ratio matters. Not because consuming is bad. But because when you’re building something of your own, your energy needs to flow outward more than it flows inward. Otherwise you end up living inside other people’s work instead of doing yours.

Celebrate the small things

Not just the milestones. The email that went well. The idea that finally landed. The fact that you showed up again today even though nobody asked you to. The Tuesday night where you cooked something simple and laid the table properly and lit the candle.

Nobody is going to celebrate the in-between for you. That’s your job. And if you don’t, you’ll spend your whole life waiting for the big moment and missing the hundreds of small ones that actually made it worth building.

The real proof

I don’t have everything worked out. I never have. But I do have a life that feels like mine. One where the work and the living aren’t fighting each other. Where I can build something I care about and still have lunch outside on a Wednesday.

That’s not a luxury. It’s a choice. And it’s available to anyone who’s willing to stop separating the building from the living and start doing both at the same time.

It won’t always be tidy. It won’t always make sense to other people. But it will feel like yours. And that’s the whole point.

It took me years to realise that the real joy isn’t found in either extreme. It’s in the in-between. The quiet middle where you can live freely but still feel grounded. Where you can live and build at the same time. Where you stop trying to control life or escape it, and finally start to experience it.

I’ve lived in the in-between for as long as I can remember. I was quite literally born between two ways of being. One French, the other English. I thought it was normal until it wasn’t. Until I had to fit in, AKA school.

School made me realise that being “different” wasn’t exactly ‘cool’ at all. My French side, the scarves my mum would put on me, the softness, the sensibility, didn’t quite fit the mould. People would say, “Say something in French,” and I couldn’t tell if they were curious or mocking me. So I started to hide it. I made myself more English. Easier to understand. Easier to belong.

I didn’t outwardly express my french side, but it was always there. In my sensitivity, my taste, my way of seeing the world. It would be there after school, at dinner time, whenever I was in France with family, where I could just be without explanation.

Looking back, I think that’s where it started, this feeling of not quite knowing where I could feel authentically myself. I think we all feel that sometimes. The quiet confusion about where we truly belong, and who we need to be to feel accepted. And most of us spend years, maybe our whole lives, trying to find the balance between the two.

The Need to Get It Right

I’ve always felt french when I’m in France and I’ve felt english when I’m in england. But only in recent years I’ve fully allowed myself to feel both at the same time, and I can’t quite explain it. But what I have learnt is that not everything needs to be explained and not everything needs to be controlled (trust me, I am still learning that too)

That tension between sides didn’t just stay cultural. It started to show up everywhere in my life, especially in my need to control things, to get them “right.” The need to belong quietly became the need to perfect.

I was diagnosed with OCD when I was 13. It was my way of trying to make sense of everything. My brain was always looking for patterns, reasons, control, anything that made the world feel a little less uncertain.

My need to get things “right” became extreme and I completely lost my sense of self in the process, as well as my ability to make my own decisions and to trust myself. I’d analyse every thought, every feeling, until it made sense. It was completely exhausting, not just for me, but for the people around me.

The Illusion of Control

What I’ve come to learn is that control only gives the illusion of safety. It quietly drains your freedom. And in chasing certainty, you lose connection with the very thing you’re trying to protect, yourself.

So how do you stay connected to who you are whilst still living, growing and evolving? How do you hold freedom and ambition at the same time?

The Decision That Changed Everything

Controlling everything didn’t work for me, so I flipped the switch. I started to think there was more to life than having everything perfectly laid out, and when the cracks started to show between controlling everything and life having other plans, I saw chasing freedom as the only other option. I had followed everything to a T, and had never felt so disconnected. Something had to change.

That’s when I quit my perfectly stable graduate job in London to be a chalet girl. No plan, just a gut feeling to go completely against everything I’d been told was the “right” thing to do. Within a week I had watched chalet girl the movie, applied to be a chalet girl, handed in my notice and moved to the French Alps. I didn’t have time to think, let alone overthink it. And that was still to do this day, one of the best things I have ever done. It wasn’t about escaping my life, it was about feeling like I was actually in it. It was a spontaneous decision, but it was also an intentional one.

It was more than anything my way of proving to myself that I could actually live my life fully without feeling out of control. Because for the first time, I was in control. It has become the foundation for how I live my life now; I just go for it and I always back myself to figure it out. Whether or not it’s the “right” thing to do, I know for certain that I will always learn something.

The Art of Living Intentionally

I’d tell anyone the same thing: live fully, take the risk, change your path, taste everything (at least once). Even if it doesn’t look “right” on paper, if it feels right to you, it probably is, and you don’t need to explain it. Let your life unfold by doing things, rather than just controlling things. Plans are good yes, but follow them loosely, focus on what feels right and follow that. I don’t care if it’s cringe but trust me, being yourself creates opportunities you can’t plan for.

Disclaimer: Do not do the thing just because TikTok told you to.

And just so we are clear, this isn’t to say to blow everything up. To move across the world just because you saw a TikTok about it. Living intentionally is knowing what’s for you and what isn’t for you. Knowing what’s trendy and what’s Trendie (there’s a difference). It’s having structure to your decisions but always leaving room for spontaneity.

It’s an art for a reason. It’s something you perfect over time, it’s subjective and not something you can buy like a membership to your dream life (sorry). Because what alignment looks like for me might not look the same for you. That’s the whole point. It’s subjective.

For me, alignment isn’t about choosing one side, but letting both coexist. My French side reminds me to enjoy the moment, and my English side reminds me to create the next one. They fuel each other. That’s what alignment really is, the ability to hold both without losing either.

It’s about designing a life that feels like yours, but one that you can actually sustain. One that holds your freedom and your ambition. Your fun side and your serious side. The side that loves staying in and the other that loves going out.

The Real Luxury

What makes it Trendie is that it’s yours. If it was just trendy, it’s likely someone else’s.

That’s the art of living in the in-between.
That’s what I call Tasteful Hedonism®: Living fully without losing yourself. It’s hedonism with taste, knowing what’s for you and going towards it, and knowing what isn’t and realigning.

If you can master that, you’ll realise the real luxury was never in what you own or what boxes you tick, but in how fully you live your own life.

Take this as your reminder to let your life unfold by doing things, rather than just controlling things.

Every September arrives with a script. New notebooks. Fresh gym memberships. That quiet seriousness that hangs in the air as summer fades. This year, the script has a headline: “lock in”.

And I get it. It’s catchy. The wellness industry eats it up. A phrase that feels decisive and marketable. Lock in your goals, lock in your life.

The Culture of Control

I can’t help asking: what exactly are we locking into? And what are we locking out?

Because the whole idea comes from a culture obsessed with control. A culture that tells us progress only counts if it’s born in isolation. That achievement is a direct product of grinding, compressing, sacrificing. It’s hustle culture in a different font, packaged like discipline, sold like self-respect. And we reach for it, because it promises certainty in a world that feels endlessly uncertain.

The irony is, “lock in” doesn’t make us more present. It makes us smaller. Narrower. We end up shutting out the very things that give life its texture. The dinner tables where conversations go sideways, the spontaneous moments where ideas sneak in uninvited, the unplanned detours that change everything. Locking in doesn’t create evolution. If you’re always locked in, you’re not actually gaining more to build from. You’re just narrowing the very palette you’ll need later.

Reminder: Nobody’s immune

And I feel the pull, of course I do. I’m human. I feel the guilt creep in when I’m out late on a Tuesday. When I choose a good night sleep instead of squeezing one more task out of myself. When I let life feel bigger than my to-do list. Sometimes I can literally hear the whispers in my head: “You won’t achieve anything if you don’t just work harder. Stop enjoying yourself. Get serious.” For a second, I almost believe them.

But here’s what I keep circling back to: if I lock in completely, I cut myself off from the very thing I’m building from.

We’ve been taught that freedom and ambition are opposites. That you can’t have both at the same time. Either you chase your goals with tunnel vision, or you step back to “enjoy life” and risk falling behind.

But that binary doesn’t quite hold up in real life.

I’ll work hard, yes. I’ll show up, move things forward, keep building. But not if the cost is missing out on life itself. Ambition should open your world, not shrink it.

Trendy < Trendie

Here’s the truth: you can’t package nuance the way you can package binaries. Nuance isn’t trendy, it’s Trendie. It’s a feeling, not a phase. It doesn’t spread as quickly. It’s harder to stamp on a caption, harder to market, harder to sell to everyone and anyone. Which is exactly why it matters. Because nuance asks for patience. It asks you to resist the script. It asks you to keep tuning in, especially when everyone around you is handing you the binary: lock in or fall behind. Hustle or soft life. Discipline or delusion.

And of course, once a phrase like lock in gains traction, brands jump on it. Suddenly it’s everywhere, in captions, ads, podcasts, even product launches. What starts as a trend quickly hardens into a script. And when something is repeated enough times, it stops sounding like an option and starts to feel like the only way.

Some people will shrug and say, “it’s not that deep.” But it is. Language matters. Culture matters. When a phrase like lock in becomes the anthem of a season, it shapes how we think about ambition, how we measure freedom, even how we treat ourselves when we fall short. To dismiss it as shallow is to miss how quietly these scripts run our lives.

The Third Way

Because life has never been binary. It’s layered. Messy. Alive. And that’s where the third way lives. Not in rejecting structure, not in surrendering to escape, but in the daily act of choosing rhythm over rigidity, nuance over certainty, presence over performance.

For me, freedom without sacrificing ambition looks like this: building with intention while still leaving space for joy, presence, and spontaneity. It’s ambition that expands your life, not ambition that shrinks it.

And this is why I still love September. I love the reset, the rhythm, the sense of a fresh page. But I refuse to reset at the expense of enjoyment. To me, structure isn’t about sacrifice, it’s about rhythm. The pulse that holds freedom together, not the prison that cuts it off. And that rhythm is subjective.

Locking in might work for some people, and I respect that. Discipline looks different for everyone. But for me, shutting out the world means shutting out my source material.

For me, tuning in looks like reminding myself that this is all part of it:

• Spending time with friends is also part of building.

• Leaving room for spontaneity.

• Resting without guilt.

• Bringing a little joy into the everyday.

• Creating more than I consume (and lighting the candle while I do it).

• Taking the long way home while the evenings are still light.

• Remembering I can live and build at the same time.

• Let work feel inspiring, not overwhelming.

• Always celebrate the small wins.

Maybe “tune in” doesn’t sound as decisive as “lock in.” Maybe it won’t go viral in the same way. But it feels human. It feels Trendie. And more than that, it feels sustainable.

I don’t want to spend September to December locked in a tunnel. I’ll work hard, yes. But I’ll also leave space for the spontaneous, the unplanned, the life that spills over the edges. Because that’s where the best ideas, and the best stories, always comes.

Because the point isn’t to prove you’re serious. The point is to keep building without forgetting to live.

Keep building but don’t forget to live.

Stay Trendie ;)

India x

Most people I know are either sprinting toward success or crashing in its aftermath.

They’re working overtime, healing on retreats, quitting jobs, starting new ones, searching for purpose, managing anxiety, tracking sleep. Always managing. Always optimising. Always swinging between hustle and escape, but never really feeling anchored.

Pleasure is either sold to us or shamed out of us. And somewhere along the way, we stopped asking how life feels, and started performing how it looks.

But I was raised in the middle. Tastefully. Not in a romanticised way, in a real one. With awareness. With presence. With taste. Even on a Tuesday. Even on a school night.

Because I grew up between French and English. And the older I get, the more I realise, that’s what taught me how to live.

The Cultural Blueprint

My mum is French (Parisian, which really does matter). She taught me to notice. To care about the details. To live well, even quietly. To lay the table properly, dress well, argue passionately. To feel everything deeply, and not apologise for it.

In French culture, presence is power. There’s always a side salad. Always a vinaigrette. A bottle of wine is opened not for celebration, but because it’s dinnertime. Living well wasn’t saved for weekends or special occasions. It was folded into the everyday.

People love to hate the French. That “Je ne sais quoi”, the attitude, the obsession with cheese. But under all that? A quiet mastery of life. A deep understanding of rhythm, ritual, and taste. And whether we admit it or not, most of us are starving for exactly that.

My dad is English in the classic sense. Reserved, self-contained, pragmatic. He taught me how to stay calm (I am still learning). How to get up and get on with it. How to be optimistic, even when things are hard. There’s no drama. Just follow-through.

In British culture, discipline is a virtue. There’s humour in discomfort. Dignity in silence. You show up, even when you don’t feel like it. You don’t need a mood to honour a commitment. You just do it.

And somewhere between them, I found the rhythm I now live by.

Not One or the Other, But Both.

French culture taught me to feel.
English culture taught me to function.

One says: feel everything.
The other says: hold it together.
One says: live fully.
The other says: get on with it.

Together, they gave me range. Together, they gave me what I call, Tasteful Hedonism®.

It’s the blend, not the binary. It’s my French side whispering light the candle anyway, and my English side reminding me don’t forget to show up tomorrow. This isn’t just cultural nostalgia. It’s a third way of living, one I believe more people are starving for than they realise.

Bilingual in More Than One Way

The older I get, the more I realise bilingualism gave me more than just two languages, it gave me two lenses. Two frequencies to live in. Two ways of making sense of the world.

And I didn’t just grow up in it. I studied it. International Media and Communications with Spanish. A whole degree spent analysing how our realities are shaped, by culture, by language, by media. How some cultures move fast. Others move deep. How some perform success. Others embody it.

We found an old home video the other day. I must’ve been about five years old, talking to my mum in French, turning to my dad and answering in English, all in the same sentence. No switch in tone. No pause.

It’s not the bilingualism that moves me now. It’s how natural the shift was. How early we learn to read the room. To code-switch. To stretch. To split the difference between who we are and who we’re expected to be.

Nobody calls it performance when you’re five. But that’s what it is. And most of us never stop.

Back then, I hated being different. People at school would ask: “Say something in French!” Like I was a party trick. I could never understand why my mum even bothered teaching us french. It felt pointless, and weirdly embarrassing.

But, now I get it.

She wasn’t just teaching me French. She was teaching me how to move between worlds. To hold more than one truth at once. To live in more than one frequency.

The Frequency You Can Actually Live In

I used to think I had to pick a lane. Be more productive, or more present. Build the empire, or burn it all down and run away to Bali to #heal.

But that’s not real life.

Real life isn’t a binary. It’s a blend.
It’s work and play, at the same time.
It’s showing up and slowing down.
It’s pouring the wine and closing the deal.
It’s designing a life that feels like yours, not one that just looks impressive online.

Tasteful Hedonism® isn’t indulgence. It’s intelligence.
It’s presence with stamina. Joy with follow-through.
It’s lighting the candle, and sending the invoice.

Proof of Concept: My Life

When I left university, I spent the next few years travelling the world, living in different countries, and getting paid for it. I felt like I’d escaped the matrix. I remember thinking: why save up to travel when I could earn and travel at the same time?

I did a ski season. Then I started capturing it all. 50 Millions views on TikTok, and an article in The Insider, later. I saw an opportunity to work with brands by creating content and building strategies from the lifestyle I was already living. I did 16 weeks of Yacht Week in Croatia, skied in Japan, sailed through the BVIs, did one too many ski festivals, went on safari in South Africa, all because I could tell a story with my iPhone. This was before I even started Trendie Social.

And for a long time, I said I ran a social media agency. Technically true. But not the full truth.

What I was really doing was helping brands feel human again. Helping people feel something. I was translating culture, emotion, energy, and turning it into strategy.

But I was also living fast. Global campaigns. Viral content. All the highs, but no real anchor. I was building for everyone else, not for myself.

And there was no job title for that. Content creator comes close, but I wasn’t just creating content. I was living it. strategising it. Connecting everything.

On Explaining Yourself

That’s where the problem starts. Because in British culture, people want a job title. Something they can understand. Something that fits in a LinkedIn bio.

But I never fit neatly into a box. I was translating rhythm into revenue. Energy into emotion. I didn’t just post, I positioned. I didn’t just work, I lived. And I made a living by doing so.

Now when people ask what I do, I just say:
“I live my life and make money from it.”

Cue the confused look. The head tilt. The polite pause that says, Right… but what do you actually do?

But not everything needs explaining. In France, they get that. You don’t need to be a something. You can just be someone. You don’t need to brand your purpose to validate your existence.

Raison d’être exists, but it’s not a slogan. It’s a slow burn. A way of just being. A reason that unfolds as you go.

And maybe that’s what Tasteful Hedonism really is:
The courage to stop explaining, and start living. Fully, but tastefully.

I stopped posting every beautiful thing I saw.
I stopped trying to package my personality into a niche.
I stopped waiting for the moment where everything would feel “on track.”

Instead, I started noticing.

How I felt when I lit the candle.
How I slowed down when I cooked.
How much more alive I felt when I wasn’t trying to prove anything.

That’s when Tasteful Hedonism stopped being just an aesthetic… and became a survival tactic.

What It Really Means to Grow Up This Way

Growing up as a Tasteful Hedonist doesn’t mean I was raised in luxury.
It means I was raised to notice.

To find rhythm. To speak softly and feel deeply.
To build something real, and enjoy it, too.

It’s not about performing perfection.
It’s about living with intention.

Tasteful Hedonism is the anchor I always come back to. It’s not a brand or aesthetic, it’s a life strategy. One that says: success is not what it looks like. It’s what it feels like.

It’s the blend, not the binary. It’s my French side reminding me to live well, and my English side making sure I follow through.

So no, I don’t have a five-year plan.
But I do have a life that feels like mine.

And maybe that’s the new ambition.
Maybe that’s enough.

Stay Trendie ;)

India xxx

It’s the same in life.

You have to give yourself space to breathe first. Not because you’re selfish, but because you finally understand the cost of running out of air while trying to help everyone else breathe.

The Quiet Return to Yourself

What if all the energy you spend making things work for everyone else — your clients, your job, your feed, your relationships — was redirected into building something that’s actually yours? Something that reflects your life, your values, your pace?

That question changed everything for me.

And it doesn’t just apply to work. This happens in life, in friendships, in love. When you keep trying to fit, to be chosen, to earn space in a story that was never really written with you in mind. It’s not about being bitter. It’s about learning to let go.

Let them go. Let it unfold. Let it be what it is. And then quietly, powerfully, come back to what’s yours.

When it’s not yours

For a long time, I gave my energy to other people’s visions. I brought strategy, voice, direction, belief. And I genuinely wanted them to do well. But the truth is, I was still building for everyone but myself. Always in the background. Quiet. Without ownership.

Then I stepped into a Co-Founder role on a brand I truly believed in. I had initially planned to take them on as a client through Trendie Social, but there wasn’t any budget. Regardless, and somewhat naively at the time, I saw potential and an opportunity to build something together. They had the platform. I brought the community, creative thinking, and what I had been quietly shaping through Trendie. The belief that creators and brands can come together to tell stories in a new way.

I treated it like it was mine. I poured everything into it, my contacts, my time, my ideas, my beliefs. Because at the time, I truly believed we were building it together.

Until one day, I was cut out. No conversation. No explanation. No credit.

It hurt. Not just because I was left out, but because it made me realise how many times I had done that before. How many times I had overgiven, stayed quiet and poured myself into something I didn’t truly own.

The return

That moment changed everything.

I realised I didn’t want to be written into someone else’s story if it meant constantly proving I deserved to be there. I didn’t want to keep handing over my ideas, my energy, my care, my passion, hoping someone else would recognise it.

I wanted to recognise it for myself.

That’s when Trendie became something more. Not just an agency, but a decision. A return to my own flow. My own voice. My own values. My anchor.

I still help build brands, I hope I always will. But now I do it differently. From a place of alignment. With people and projects that feel right. Where the process is built on clarity, not compromise. Where I’m no longer giving myself away to fit someone else’s version of the story.

I realised I wasn’t here to run a traditional agency. I care too much. Too much to build brands I don’t believe in. Too much to separate who I am from what I create. Too much to keep bending myself to fit into other people’s idea of success.

Everything I used to give away is now built into something that belongs to me. This isn’t about being louder. It’s about being clear. It’s about building something so aligned, so considered, so intentional and so true that no one else can write me out of it.

Because being cut out of someone else’s story is painful. But choosing to own your own story is powerful.

This isn’t just about reclaiming a narrative. It’s about reclaiming a life. Your time. Your creativity. Your voice.

And this time, no one can write me out of my own story. Because this one’s mine.

I quit my first job three months out of university to be a chalet girl. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I couldn’t sit at a desk watching my life pass by without feeling like I was actually in it. I made the decision, found a job on a random Facebook group, handed in my notice, moved to the Alps, all within a week. I didn’t have time to overthink it.

Since then, I’ve travelled to more than sixteen countries, lived in four on my own, started my own agency at 22, and built a brand and a life that is my own. But I didn’t do any of it recklessly. It wasn’t chaos for the sake of the story. It was intentional. It was chosen. It was fun, yes, but it had depth. It had direction. Even when I didn’t know where I was heading, I knew I was moving with purpose.

That way of living is what I call Tasteful Hedonism.

Not because it sounds nice. Because it’s how I’ve lived my life without ever having the words for it.

What it is

Tasteful Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure with discernment.

It starts with hedonism. The belief that pleasure is a good thing. Not something to earn, postpone, or apologise for. Pleasure is not the opposite of ambition. It’s not the reward at the end. It’s the texture of a life being lived well.

Then it adds taste. Not taste as aesthetics or status. Taste as the ability to filter. To know what genuinely enriches you versus what just looks like it should. To notice the difference between something that fills you and something that just fills time.

Put them together and you get a way of living that is both expansive and edited. You say yes to more than most people. But you also say no with more clarity. You go for things. You taste everything. And then you let go of what isn’t yours.

What it isn’t

It’s not excess. Excess is hedonism without the taste. It’s doing everything, going everywhere, saying yes to anything because you can. That’s not living fully. That’s just consuming more.

It’s not restraint either. Restraint is taste without the hedonism. It’s knowing what’s good but never letting yourself have it. Holding back out of guilt or discipline or the belief that pleasure has to be justified first.

Tasteful Hedonism sits between the two. It’s the Wednesday night bottle of wine that was never expensive but the ritual always was. It’s booking the trip because it felt right, not because you needed to prove you deserved it. It’s staying out late on a Tuesday and still showing up the next morning. It’s a long dinner that makes you forget what day it is.

It’s pleasure that you’re present for. Not numbing. Not escaping. Actually in it.

How you know when you’re in it

You stop scanning for what’s next. You order without second guessing. You sit down at the table you chose and you actually enjoy it. The evening doesn’t need to be documented to feel real. The meal doesn’t need to be impressive to feel good. You’re not performing your life. You’re in it.

You can hold ambition and enjoyment at the same time without one cancelling the other out. You’re building something and it doesn’t require you to abandon everything that makes you feel alive.

You trust your own taste. Not someone else’s algorithm, not the list everyone’s been sharing, not the place that looks good on Instagram. Yours. And that trust came from trying things, getting it wrong, noticing what landed and what didn’t, and slowly filtering until what’s left is genuinely yours.

How you know when you’ve drifted

You start justifying your choices to other people. You start explaining why you deserve the dinner, the trip, the afternoon off. Enjoyment starts feeling like something you have to earn rather than something you’re allowed to live inside.

Or the other direction. You stop noticing. Everything blurs. You’re doing a lot but none of it is landing. You’re chasing the next thing before the current thing has had a chance to settle. The appetite is still there but the taste has gone quiet.

Both are signs you’ve moved away from the middle. Both are fixable. You just have to notice.

Why it matters now

We live in a world that constantly pulls us toward extremes. Hustle or escape. Optimise or check out. Perform or disappear. There is very little language for the space in between.

Tasteful Hedonism is that language. It’s not a brand or an aesthetic. It’s a life strategy. A way of moving through the world that lets you build and enjoy at the same time. A filter for deciding what’s worth your time, your energy, your attention.

I didn’t invent it. I just lived it before I had the words for it. And now, through Trendie, I want to give it a home.

If this resonates with you, you’re probably already living some version of it. Maybe you’ve just never had a name for it.

So here it is.

Tasteful Hedonism. The art of living fully without losing yourself.

Stay Trendie x