ISSUE 03: Wabi-Sabi and the Poetry of Imperfection

New York, chipped mugs, and learning to love what’s beautifully broken.

I’ve lived in some beautiful cities. Paris, where the windows are always taller than the people. Buenos Aires, where the buildings crumble with drama. Miami, which feels like a fever dream with good coffee. But I always come back to New York.

It’s not exactly “nice.”

It’s noisy, it smells like warm trash in the summer, and it constantly demands more than it gives. And yet, I love it the way you love something that’s earned your love.

Living here is like dating someone who’s kind of a mess but somehow still compelling—because beneath the chaos is something real, and specific, and full of stories.

This, I think, is the emotional architecture of Wabi-Sabi: the Japanese aesthetic philosophy that embraces imperfection, impermanence, and quiet charm. And though it’s often misinterpreted as minimalism with a side of beige ceramics, its spirit is far more interesting—and far less relegated to a Pinterest board.

There’s a reason your most beloved T-shirt is probably the softest, most worn-out one in the drawer. It’s stretched in the right places, the print is cracked, and the neckline doesn’t judge your hungover posture. It’s been through things with you.

“Wabi-Sabi is underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty that waits patiently to be discovered.” — Leonard Koren

Wabi-Sabi is about finding beauty not in perfection, but in patina. In the plate that got chipped during a dinner party with your girls, the hem that frayed when your cuffs unfolded as you walked through a new city for the first time, the apartment with uneven floorboards whose creaks you adore because they’re the first ones you paid for on your own. It’s about character, and character is what makes something matter.

We’ve somehow been tricked into thinking “tasteful” means slick. A perfect color match. A flawless finish. A — god forbid — palette of millennial gray because it’s “inoffensive” (which I patently disagree with, by the way).

But you know what has taste? The espresso machine with water stains from years of use. The mismatched ceramic bowl your friend made in a class. The 70s lamp that turns the room amber.

“Things wabi-sabi have no need for the reassurance of symmetry or perfection.” — Beth Kempton

Charm is what makes you want to stay in a space; perfection makes you afraid to sit down. New York is a Wabi-Sabi city. So is Naples. So is Oaxaca. These places are alive with cracks and graffiti and awkward sidewalks. They’re not sterile. They breathe.

When I visited Copenhagen for the first time, I remember being stunned by the beauty and cleanliness (of both the place AND the people). But…I was also weirdly bored by how perfect it all was. New York makes you earn it. And in that effort, you develop affection, like a dinner party where the lights flicker and the food’s a little cold, but no one wants to leave.

Beauty in imperfection isn’t just aesthetic—it’s emotional. It tells a story.

When you walk into someone’s apartment and see a beat-up table, or a threadbare throw that clearly gets used every day—that’s intimacy. You’re seeing evidence of life. That’s good taste, too. I should tell you: I’m a Scorpio, but with Virgo rising everywhere. My birth chart looks like an alphabet soup of fix-it energy. I’ve always had this deep, near-clinical need to organize, correct, streamline, and optimize, with color coded excel sheets to match. I live for plans. I crave control.

And yet—objects have taught me something astrology and therapists never could: it’s okay if something is wonky. In fact, wonky might be the point!

The table with uneven legs, the ceramic bowl that lists slightly to one side, the scarf with one thread pulling like it had a thought of its own—these are the pieces I remember. The ones I love. They're little rebellions against my compulsive need to fix, polish, and perfect.

“A crack is how the light gets in,” as Leonard Cohen said.

Loving something imperfect is its own kind of surrender. A letting go; a quiet rebellion against your own instincts. And in that surrender—there’s softness, there’s humor, there’s grace. I’m still learning this, but beauty, in its most sincere form, keeps teaching me.

In Japanese, Wabi originally meant “the loneliness of living in nature,” while Sabi meant “the patina of age.” Together, they became a worldview—a quiet appreciation for the imperfect, the impermanent, and the incomplete.

It’s not about mess. It’s about meaning. About noticing what’s there, not what’s missing.

This, to me, is the most emotionally intelligent kind of taste. Not what shines the brightest—but what resonates the deepest. I used to think one element of good taste was about precision (and maybe some part of it is), but I also think there’s a big chunk of it that’s about permission. The permission to love something with a crack in it, to keep something even though it doesn’t match, to stop apologizing for the chipped plate or the coat that’s a little worn but makes you feel like you.

Taste and appreciation for the imperfect is more than just aesthetic. It’s relational. You love a city or a space or an object because of its flaws. Not in spite of them.

This week’s goodies: Wonky, lopsided beauties that wear their “flaws” like jewelry.

Next week: a rant about Crocs and a painter who scribbled better than anyone.