There are weeks in New York City that feel almost impossibly full — the kind where you blink on a Monday morning and somehow it’s Thursday afternoon and you’re sitting on your balcony in the sun, trying to piece together everything that happened in between. This past week was one of those weeks, and I wanted to sit down and share all of it with you, because honestly? It felt like a turning point. The quiet, personal kind that doesn’t announce itself with fireworks but that you recognize later, when you look back, as one of those before and after moments.
I filmed a vlog! An actual vlog. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that this channel has been in a sort of hibernation, so the fact that I pressed record and actually uploaded something feels like a bigger deal to me than it probably sounds. You can watch the whole thing right here:
And if you’re more of a reader (hi, same), I’m going to tell you everything in this post too — because some things deserve more than a vlog can hold.
Starting the Week at the Met Before the Rest of the World Woke Up
Let me paint you a picture: it’s 8:15 in the morning, the city is barely stirring, and I am walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art while it is still closed to the public.
I know. I know.
When I first moved to New York in 2016 — fresh off the plane, wide-eyed, convinced I had made either the best or the worst decision of my life — I never could have imagined that one day I would be getting a private tour of one of the greatest museums in the world before the doors opened for the day. And yet, this was my second time doing exactly that. The first was in 2019, and when the museum invited me again a few months ago, I genuinely sat with it for a moment before responding. It’s one of those things I refuse to take for granted, because I still remember what it felt like to be the girl who had just arrived here and was just beginning to figure out what her life in this city could look like.
The exhibit is Sargent in Paris — a deep dive into the work of John Singer Sargent, the artist most famously known for Madame X, which has lived at the Met for years and which I have loved for a long time. I actually went to see it a couple of years ago after a scene in a TV show reminded me of just how arresting that painting is in person. There is something about it — the stark black dress, the severe profile, the almost defiant energy of the whole composition — that stays with you.
But this exhibit goes so much further back. It starts with Sargent as a teenager, eighteen or twenty years old, already producing drawings that feel fully formed in a way that is almost unsettling. And then it traces his work through his twenties and thirties, and you watch someone who is not just talented but prolific — someone who seems to have understood from a very young age exactly what he was here to do and who had the opportunity to actually go and do it.
I find something deeply moving about that. I think about my own path — the years of figuring out, the pivots, the moments of doubt — and there is a part of me that looks at someone like Sargent and feels a kind of tenderness toward the idea of a person who gets their calling early and runs toward it with everything they have. One of my favorite pieces in the exhibit was a beach scene that he painted at twenty-two. The light on it, the way the figures seem to exist somewhere between dream and reality — I kept coming back to it. Twenty-two. Honestly.
We also got the most beautiful gift bags on the way out: the official exhibition book (Sargent in Paris, of course), a set of note cards featuring pieces from the show, and a fragrance diffuser by the brand Pura, created to evoke the spirit of Madame X and the exhibit itself. I genuinely cannot wait to try it.
If you’re in New York or visiting soon, go. Even if the Sargent in Paris exhibit ends before you get there, Madame X lives permanently in the American Wing of the Met and it is worth seeing in person every single time.
Nails, Flowers, and a Corner Table in the West Village
Before the Met morning, I had also been to an event with one of my favorite nail brands, Kiss — you might have seen my nails in the vlog and I just have to say, I am so happy with how they turned out. Very me, very spring, very “I feel put together but also like I didn’t try too hard.” If you’ve never tried press-on nails, I genuinely think they are one of the most underrated beauty things out there, especially for those of us who somehow always arrive at fashion week or a big event with sad, chipped polish. The prep work they did before application — buffing, cuticle care — made such a difference in the final result.
After the nail event, a few of us went to Dante in the West Village, and I honestly could not have loved it more. It’s this beautiful corner restaurant with flowers literally spilling out of it, the kind of place that looks like it was designed specifically to make you feel like you’re living well. We sat inside this time but I am already planning a return trip for outdoor seating when the weather is reliably warm, because I have a feeling a summer evening on that corner is going to be one of those perfect New York moments.
An Apartment Tour Series, a Decade-and-a-Half of Blogging, and a New Beginning
Okay. This is the part I really want to tell you about.
On Tuesday I spent the day filming the first video for something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time: an apartment tour series featuring my friends’ apartments here in New York City. My friend Annie said yes — she has the most beautiful studio in Hudson Yards — and I had so much fun filming with her that I’m already thinking about who I want to feature next. If you live in New York and you have a space you’d want to share, genuinely please reach out, because I want to make this a regular thing.
And then Wednesday. Wednesday was the kind of day where you’re in front of your computer from morning until night because something you’ve been building toward for months is finally about to go live.
On May 1st, my blog Penny Lane turned 15 years old.
Fifteen years. When I started that blog I was living in Argentina, I was a different version of myself in almost every measurable way, and the internet was a completely different place. Blogs were everything back then — your blog name was practically your identity, the way a handle is now. People knew me as Penny Lane before they knew me as Flor. And that blog was my home. My corner of the internet. The place I put my outfits and my thoughts and my experiences and my voice, especially in those early years when I first moved to New York and needed somewhere to process what it felt like to build a life from scratch in a new country.
But things change. They’re supposed to. Over the last couple of years — 2024 and into 2025 especially — I found myself posting less and less, not just because life got hard (though it did), but because something about posting under that old blog name started to feel like wearing clothes that didn’t quite fit anymore. My audience had found me on Instagram, people knew my real name, and I kept thinking: what if everything lived in one place, under my actual name, as a real reflection of who I am right now?
So I made the decision to relaunch my personal site, flopereira.com, with the blog living inside it, alongside my brand work, my YouTube, my newsletter — everything. One home for all of it. And I wanted to time it right. A site relaunch without a deadline is just an idea that lives forever in a Google doc, and I knew that. So when I realized that May 1st — the blog’s 15th birthday — was followed immediately by May 2nd, which is 5/2/25, which reads as 5-2-2-5 or 2-5-2-5 depending on how you write it… I know this is going to sound a little unhinged to some of you, but I am a person who believes in the magic of certain dates and numbers. I always have. And that date had a ring to it that I couldn’t ignore. So we did it. May 1st: 15 years of Penny Lane, honored and celebrated and closed as a chapter. May 2nd: the new site, live.
Migrating 15 years of content is a lot. But the way I’ve been thinking about it is like moving apartments — yes, it’s a new address, a new space, a different energy, but you bring your furniture. You bring your history. You make it yours. All of those old posts are still there, like a time capsule of a version of me that I am very fond of, even when I cringe a little. And the new space is exactly what I wanted it to be: light, modern, interactive, very me.
I also finally moved my newsletter over to Substack, which has been such a good decision — I’ll link everything below.
On Spring, and Things Getting Lighter
I don’t want to gloss over something I mentioned in the vlog, because I think a lot of you will understand it even if your specifics are different from mine.
The first few months of this year were hard. There was a health diagnosis in my family at the beginning of the year that knocked the wind out of me, and the truth is that if you were following along — whether on here, Instagram, or anywhere else — you might have noticed that I was quieter than usual, or that when I did show up, something felt a little off. I’m not going to share more than that right now, because it’s not fully my story to tell, but I want you to know that things are looking more manageable, and that I have spent these months learning how to live alongside something difficult rather than waiting for it to go away.
And then spring came. I know it sounds almost too neat — too metaphorical — but I genuinely felt a shift when the city started to bloom. More light, more warmth, the energy on the street changing, and something in me changing alongside it. I started the newsletter. I launched the site. I filmed a vlog. And I am sitting on my balcony with my dog sleeping on my legs (she is a menace and I love her) and I feel, for the first time in a while, genuinely hopeful.
I am not the same version of myself I was six months ago. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think sometimes you go through something that changes the shape of you, and the goal isn’t to get back to who you were before — it’s to figure out who you are now and build something good from there.
A Few Last Things
If you want to visit the Sargent in Paris exhibit at the Met, I’ll leave the details in the description of the vlog — and again, even after the exhibit closes, Madame X lives in the American Wing permanently (unless it’s on loan), and it is absolutely worth seeking out.
If you want to follow along more closely, you can find me here:
- flopereira.com — of course, right here, my personal site, brand new and finally fully me
- My Substack newsletter
- And on YouTube, where I am very much relaunching and showing up more
Thank you for reading this far. Whether you’ve been here for 15 years or 15 minutes, it means everything to me that you’re here at all. See you in the next one.
— Flor 🌸
