About
Life in a Cold Climate is a chronicle of my attempts at life (and style, occasionally) in a cold climate. It includes tight dresses, books and perfume and books about perfume, enthusiastic cooking, a quest for the perfect dinner table chair, tulips, spirited monologues (rants) on matters of style and, inevitably, antistatic and opaque tights. I have left out the economy and politics bits, as I get enough of those in my day job.
If you feel that your views as a Person of Complexity and/or Dweller of the North are underrepresented on the great Interwebs, come take a look.
PS It has come as a pleasant surprise to me that it’s not only my loving family and friends reading this blog, so a bit more background info might be in order.
In my everyday life I work as a political communication professional and am currently based in Brussels, although I’m originally from Estonia and still travel there often. I love my job, but as a creative outlet it’s somewhat limited: a person needs to think and write about more than economic policy coordination. That was one reason behind the blog.
The other was my dissatisfaction with much style writing out there, especially in traditional magazines. They somehow manage to make things timid AND unpractical at the same time. And then there is the assumption made by many people that if you are interested in lipsticks, you by default cannot have any other interests or any brain capacity, for that matter. This is what I wrote when I tried to sum up the idea of the blog in the very beginning:
“Life in a Cold Climate is a lifestyle blog for women (and men) who have an interest in fashion and beauty, but also read, eat, go to museums, watch movies, vote, have a career and maybe children. Or a cat. They love to make a statement, but also acknowledge the existence of winter, cobble stones, creepy bosses and budget limitations. They are tired of reading copy-paste product blurbs in magazines or being made feel guilty and stupid for liking perfume.
LICC tries to be intelligent, witty, playful, eclectic, enthusiastic, authentic and feminist. It’s based in Tallinn/Brussels/Kotinuka (a tiny village in Estonia where I’m from and where my mother still lives) and has a Nordic bias. LICC will understand that you cannot go bare-legged year round in Northen Finland and if you tried strictly seasonal eating in Estonia, you’d have to survive on snow and bare branches for six months. But LICC is also convinced that some fabulousness can be had even in November.”
A piece of my style philosophy is covered in the post called On The Importance of Overdressing and with some caveats, this can be applied to other elements of my life and blog.
It’s a totally non-commercial endeavor, everything I feature I’ve bought myself and all pictures are taken by me (I’m sure you can tell), unless stated otherwise. When I start receiving billion-dollar sponsorship offers, I’ll let you know.
UPDATE: while the vast majority of items on the site remain my own, I have slightly changed my position on borrowing clothes for shoots. I have written a longer post on why I now sometimes do it. My policy on indicating whether things are mine, on loan or gifted (there have been rare occasions where I’ve featured something I’ve been given) remains the same – if something has not been bought by me, it will be made very clear.
I hope you enjoy.
Me