Outside of every great metropolis is its great escape. This alter-ego is not antithesis, it’s the same self in different guise, a transformation that reveals something essential about both. Biarritz completes Paris. Milan unwinds into Forte dei Marmi.
Montauk is a soft reflection of Manhattan concrete. London to Cornwall, Lisbon to Setùbal and Los Angeles to the endless Pacific with Santa Monica. One is the brighter, lighter twin, a coquette displaying herself in the sun with girlish delight.
Resort towns can be elegant, demure or honky-tonk, but they’re essential to balance the seriousness of the cities where we send our breezy postcard messages, open faced, like a palm, that everyone – even the mailman! — can read along their route: “Wish you were here.” The sun hits the sea in glints and cuts through the accumulated grime of city life. By the time the postcard arrives back home, chances are the author has moved on. It’s a relic of a glistening moment, now in the past.
The Postcard Sunglasses capture that other side of the city, that voice captured in that light, happy scrawl, and the person into whom we transform as the city fades behind us, and the glimmering sea appears in the distance.