Lauren Adriana

About

A Max Liebermann quote I am particularly fond of reads, ‘the art of drawing is the art of omission.’ Although, when I go to check that he did indeed say this, the internet fails me in finding a reference – an omission in itself. Never mind, it’s the thought that counts. I could argue that any act of creation is one of omission, especially writing – a process of calculated selectivity. With this in mind, I set out to write a portrait of a place; a book length work about Mayfair and the strata of experiences within it – a sample chapter of which is included here. Titled for these purposes, Luxury Lane, it explores Bond Street through a collaging of multiple stories and detailed imagery. The writing sits at the intersection of cultural history and memoir, exploring the creative ways in which people prescribe spaces – and the objects within them – with meaning. I am talking about the places where people go to escape themselves and the building of dreams, but also the generational legacies and cultural forces that can underpin these. At its heart is the fragility of our fantasies; the fear our dreams may not, in fact, belong to us.

A written portrait is not a reproduction – it is an evocation. While it is tempting to view the act of writing about a place as one of moving through it with a basket, adding in items of interest, it is the absolute opposite. The place is the basket; it contains all things, all stories, and my role is to make white space around the moments I find relevant and that move beyond the simply anecdotal. As it turns out, I have a peculiar knack for noticing civilisation’s more ridiculous and absurd moments – particularly abundant in Mayfair – and it is these scenes I expand on and develop into something that speaks to a larger story. It is the process of composing narrative from snippets of observation, memoir, literature, theory and urban history, so that together they become more than simply the spectacle at play.

– Lauren Adriana is a writer and designer based in London