The lining of a coat is a perfectly reasonable place to be extravagant. You feel it every time you put the thing on, which strikes me as justification enough. I’m interested in how a pleasure like that gets made, and in the decisions one learns to recognize and is far too well brought up to mention. A detail that looks small can keep me reading for days and lead me well beyond the wardrobe. By then I’ve given up claiming a merely scholarly interest.
I’m Elías Delgado, and I write THE COBALT LINE. What draws me tends to live close to the body, or in the rooms where we spend our lives: clothes, scent, architecture, art, food, and, inevitably, vice. I follow each subject through its materials and its history, though my own life has a habit of getting involved before I’ve finished.
Knowing has never once talked me out of wanting a beautiful thing. Usually I want it more. This is inconvenient when the research supplies excellent reasons to reconsider. I try to be exact about those reasons, and about my own part in the affair. You may come to a different conclusion. I’d like to hear it, particularly if you noticed something I missed while admiring the workmanship.
I make this publication with friends, colleagues, and collaborators, and some of what passes between us stays between us. Everything that reaches the page has been through my hands, and I stand behind it, mistakes included.
