Navigating the Season

BY ANGELA M. BROMMEL

We asked Angela to join our team at Chic Compass and to tell us what the magazine represented to her. Angela M. Brommel is a Nevada writer with Iowa roots. Mojave in July (Tolson Books) is her debut full-length poetry collection. In 2018, her chapbook, Plutonium & Platinum Blond, was published by Serving House Books. Her poetry has been published in The Best American Poetry blog, the North American Review, The Literary Review’s TLR Share, and many other journals and anthologies. A 2018 Red Rock Canyon Artist in Residence, Angela served as the inaugural poet of the program. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, and an MA in Theatre from the University of Northern Iowa. You can also find her at The Citron Review as Editor-in-Chief.

As a curator, I am often asked how I know what art to choose, and then the individual inevitably confides that they are afraid of making the wrong choice when selecting art. But the thing is, every day we make choices to value certain items and experiences over others. We curate our wardrobe, home décor, and even our social media presence.

We are shaped by what we expose ourselves to and what we are open to being shaped by. Our choices, our style, our sense of what is chic – evolves as we do. Curation is an act that turns our focus in a particular direction.

The directional indications on a compass (North, NE, East, South-East, South, South-West, West, and North-West) are known as a Compass Rose as well as the Rose of the Winds. The compass and its rose have long helped the lost and the searching to navigate their journey. Chic Compass is your companion as you navigate fashion, travel, music, food, culture, and design.

At the edge of late summer and early fall, everywhere we are bombarded with images of fall as pumpkin spice, harvest, and the chilly slowdown to winter. But I only have to look out my kitchen window to see that the roses are amidst a second blooming season. Everything looks new from this direction. On the last Saturday in September I made my way from one event to the next to the launch party for the cover of Chic Compass held at Eccoci in Boca-Park. The clothes were gorgeous, the place was abuzz with people, and I was particularly taken by a demonstration by Amy Boger of We Do Plants on how to create fall planters with succulents. I even won a stunning book, Pamela Golbin’s Valentino: Themes and Variations, as part of the raffle to benefit Forgotten Song Foundation.

Afterward, in Sambalatte while drinking a Rose Petal Latte, I reflected again on the convergence of chic and a compass. Later, I bought two kinds of rose tea that I have since drunk in the evening before bed as I try to stay in that place of unexpected goodness. Since joining Chic Compass, I have found myself pausing more often to ask what I might explore next while navigating this season.

Maybe finding our chic is more akin to the elegance of math and science. Perhaps it’s about letting ourselves sometimes get lost in the beauty of the everyday, and then giving it the room to bloom.