Elegance is like porn: difficult to define, but you’ll know it when you see it. ‘Elegant’ is a sibling term of ‘stylish’ – another difficult-to-explain concept – that implies a certain gracefulness and sophistication, often also simplicity. I don’t think, however, that the latter is always a prerequisite for elegance. Dior’s New Look was elegant, but not necessarily simple.

The minimal can, of course, be elegant. But what I find essential for elegance is not the idea of paring everything back, it’s the idea of doing just enough, of curation, of being deliberate. This is maybe why elegance is a somewhat old-fashioned word, it is too intentional and also too concerned with being pleasing. Elegance can be effortless (some people simply are gifted), but its effect is of thoughtfulness and refinement.

I am drawn to elegant dressing. This is not the same as to say that I dress elegantly, but in many ways it is my home territory – a slip of a dress, a spindly heel, a whisper of silk, a graceful silhouette. At the same time, I have been fighting this ingrained tendency for years. Interested in fashion and style, I started to find elegance somewhat boring and restraining. I come from a society with very little class divison, but elegance is closely linked to class and a certain type of social capital; it tends to exclude, not include. The visual vocabulary of elegance usually looks back instead of forward and is fond of rules and hierarchies. For my liking, elegance is too close to ‘tasteful’, one of the most loaded words in the history of mankind.

So I’ve pushed back and I’ve branched out, challenging myself to wear things that are less conventionally beautiful or in good taste, more casual, more innovative, sometimes trendy. I’m glad I did – and still am doing – that: you know what you are only in relation to what you are not. And to meet the strange(r), you have to go to the border. (Also, just like everybody else, I am many things.)

Recently, however, I feel like I’ve come full circle. I hardly wore jeans – and trousers in general – as a teenager, as it didn’t seem ‘me’. Needless to say, that was an unusual position to take at the time. And now, I again feel like looking elegant has become almost radical, a disruption in the current visual landscape. Maybe that’s why I increasingly just want to wear a beautiful dress, unironically, maybe even with heels.

This golden, timeless dress by Aldo Järvsoo seemed ideal to illustrate my point. It has very little to do with trends and even less with avant-garde. What it does have is an elegance of the line and a simultaneous richness and simplicity. And I just feel comfortable and beautiful in it. I don’t mean to say elegance must be fancy or can only exist outside of fashion – you absolutely can look elegant in jeans and a blazer. This here is just one way of trying to ‘do elegance’ and I humbly present it to you as an option.

Dress by Aldo Järvsoo, shoes from Zara. Makeup Grete Madisson, hair Natallia at Helen Heinroos Hair, images Krõõt Tarkmeel.