In the dark of a Parisian winter, New York Times best-selling author Garance Doré whispered her top three tips to master dating and find love…
For years, I’ve followed Garance Doré. She’s a French photographer, illustrator and author, best known for her fashion blog.
A friend introduced me to her street-style photography blog. At that time, she (and I) lived in New York City, where she took photos of New York Fashion Week and beautiful people around town, and I was a student at NYU. Later, turned her brand into a business.
Today, she’s a multi-passionate author, entrepreneur, and skincare advocate based in London.
Last November, Doré invited a coven of like-minded women who read her online newsletter to congregate in the beautiful spaces of “The Apartment”, an actual apartment from the French lifestyle brand Merci Paris. We gathered to eat small plates of crackers with fig butter, meet fellow readers of her beautifully-written newsletter, and chat about love and life.
Here are three tips for finding love from Garance Doré:
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1.You Can Be Better Together.
I wasn’t good being single,” Garance told us, a room of women assembled to meet her and to hear her speak. “I was miserably, clingy, desperate.”
She alludes to a point we might have all felt, during the lowest lows of dating: that life could be so much happier within the confines of a stable relationship. Indeed, this idea proved to be true for her.
“I’m just so much better when I’m in a relationship,” she added, breaking down that popular idea that an independent woman should be happy without a loving partner.
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Acknowledge Your Own Bullsh*t.
The conversation in the room turned to a discussion of dating apps, and the kinds of people you meet online. Several of the women in the room recounted their miserable experiences, to nods from the group.
Doré, too, is no stranger to the horrors of dating via algorithms. After her last breakup, and a period of healing and , she turned to dating apps (notably: Raya) to test the waters of love once again.
This time, however, success seemed out of reach.
“After a year of humiliation after humiliation, I had to ask myself… I know it’s not me, but maybe it is?” she stated poignantly.
Doré encouraged us to ask ourselves if the negative experiences with dating apps reflected the attitude we were putting out. She realised, she said, that she needed to change her attitude to the men she was meeting in order to bring out the best in them.
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In The End, Dating is Worth It.
We were draped around the room, some sitting on the floor, some standing in the corners, bellies full of wine and cheese and good old girly conversation. A brunette with knee-high boots was describing how she fell in love with a woman at age 45, and another talked about the man she was currently seeing. Discussing so many dating failures had us feeling like finding true love is rare, or a fluke.
“But isn’t it worth it?” Doré chimed in, resetting the tone of the conversation. “You go on a lot of dates and in the end you find a really good one,” she said with a smile
Today, she lives in a beautiful home (with, I think, that elusive minimalist Scandinavian aesthetic) with her partner, Graham McTavish, and dog Lulu.
From the other corner of the room, I breathed silently, “Yes!” for here was a woman who had dated around the world, and still believed in love. Here was a woman reminding us that the right person is just around the corner – given enough data points, or dates.
Thank you, Garance, for an inspiring evening in Paris.
Which one of her tips was your favourite?
