INTERVIEW & PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEORGIA HILMER

MOLLY (WRITER)

QUESTION (GEORGIA):

You explained to me that your chosen word, "Sophrosyne," is Greek and suggests excellent character in a well-balanced individual. Why did you choose it? Where did you come across it for the first time?

ANSWER (MOLLY):

I had an unconventional education (I dropped out of high school sophomore year) and when I eventually got to college, I found myself wanting to take all the archetypal liberal arts courses. Like history! And semiotics! And, most alluring of all, “Classics.” I didn’t know what “Classics” even meant until halfway through the first semester, when I learned that it means "reading old texts and thinking about them." Perfect.

Sophrosyne was a word I encountered in the introductory course that everyone had to take before they could dream about learning Sanskrit or reading about Greco-Roman witches. What I learned immediately is that the Greeks had a sturdy moral architecture that appealed to me, who was more or less a godless atheist, and that they were unrivaled geniuses at using single words to encompass abstract concepts. Sophrosyne fits into both categories.

The word is vast but specific, and it was considered the benchmark of being a good person. Sophrosyne meant having a clear sense of reality. It meant understanding your personal limits, and finding ways to not let them foil you. It meant being truthful and having self-restraint. It was, in short, a more sophisticated and philosophical version of what we call “adulting” in the 21st century.

Every day we’re all confronted with a thousand possibilities to be a shitty or non-shitty human, and I thought it would be both a tribute and a useful reminder if I could turn the concept into a physical object—an object of beauty!—to be worn every day.

@mollybethyoung- captured on film in NYC (with her cat) 🖤

apartment by @georgiahilmer

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