If you're living on planet Earth, two things probably come to mind when someone mentions Summer Fridays.
If you've ever worked in corporate america, you know exactly what I mean. Somewhere between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the office quietly decides we've all earned a little bit of our lives back. The meeting that would normally be scheduled for four somehow disappears. Laptops close a little earlier. The out-of-office replies start rolling in. And for a few precious months, Friday afternoon belongs to us again.
If you're a beauty girl, however, your mind goes somewhere entirely different. Summer Fridays is the skincare brand that somehow understands exactly the kind of woman we all are. The woman who glows. The woman who always has a dinner reservation. The woman who leaves the office in oversized sunglasses, slips into Sephora for a new Lip Butter Balm, and then casually heads off to a rooftop somewhere because the weather would be wasted indoors.
As a matter of fact, that's exactly where I'm headed this Friday. The moment I log off, I'm making a beeline for the Summer Fridays display because there are at least three shades I need to swatch immediately.
Which got me thinking.
What if both versions of Summer Fridays are actually selling the same thing?
Not skincare.
Not an early dismissal.
A lifestyle.
People always tell me they wish they could see life the way I do, and I never really know how to answer that because, to me, certain things just seem obvious. Summer was never designed to be spent catching up on emails. It was designed for long lunches that become early dinners. For lingering. For wandering into a hotel lobby because you heard they make an excellent French 75. For accepting the invitation instead of saying, "Let's plan something soon," and accidentally scheduling it for October.
I think Summer Fridays are one of the last remaining social rituals we have.
We've become very good at organizing our professional lives and surprisingly bad at curating our personal ones. We plan quarterly goals, networking events, and dentist appointments with military precision. Yet somehow we expect friendship, community, and fun to happen spontaneously.
Then June arrives, someone lets us out of work a few hours early, and all of a sudden the city feels different.
The restaurants are full before sunset. Sidewalk cafés are alive with people who decided they could answer that email on Monday. Friends who haven't seen each other since New Year's are sitting outside over oysters, catching up as though no time has passed at all. Beautifully dressed women wander through department stores with absolutely nowhere urgent to be.
I've always thought one of the greatest luxuries in life is unhurried time.
Not free time. That's different. Free time usually becomes an opportunity to catch up, clean up, or get ahead. Unhurried time has no agenda. It leaves room for serendipity. You stop by the beauty counter because you've been thinking about that lip balm. You walk past a florist and suddenly your dining table needs peonies. You text a friend and ask if she'd like to meet for champagne before dinner, not because you're celebrating anything in particular, but because the weather is beautiful and it would be a shame not to.
Maybe that's what I find so charming about the name Summer Fridays. It captures a feeling that has very little to do with beauty products and everything to do with possibility.
It's the version of yourself that doesn't rush.
The woman who leaves work, touches up her lip gloss in the elevator mirror, and remembers she made reservations two weeks ago because she understands that a social calendar is just as important as a work calendar. The woman who treats a Friday in June with the same anticipation other people reserve for a holiday weekend.
Lately, I've been wondering if we've misunderstood leisure.
We've been taught to think of it as something extravagant. A luxury resort. A first-class ticket. A perfectly planned European summer. But I don't think that's why people remember certain seasons of their lives so fondly.
I think they remember the rituals.
The standing Friday reservation at the neighborhood restaurant. The friend who always hosts the first dinner party of the summer. The annual trip to wine country. The museum afternoons that somehow end at the hotel bar. The beautiful little traditions that become the architecture of a life.
Maybe that's why the women who seem to enjoy life the most never appear to be chasing it. They've simply learned to notice it while it's happening.
So yes, this Friday I'll probably buy the lip balm. I'll almost certainly walk around the store longer than necessary. I might make an impromptu dinner reservation. I might call a friend. I might end up sitting somewhere with a crisp white tablecloth, watching the city unwind around me, thinking about how strange it is that we need permission to leave work early before we remember we have lives waiting for us outside the office.
But perhaps that's the quiet magic of a Summer Friday.
It reminds us that life was never meant to fit neatly between calendar invites.
Perhaps the occasion was simply that it was Friday.
See you next Friday,
Alicia Sinclaire