Slave to a New Dressing Gown

The new curtains made the chair look like firewood. He bought a leather armchair.

Then came new paintings. New sculptures. New mirrors. For months, he obsessed over

harmony—over making every object in the room match the elegance of that scarlet robe.

Piece by piece, he replaced everything he owned until his entire environment finally lived up

to the standard the robe had set. And when it was over, Denis Diderot was

broke again. Later, he wrote a famous essay titled “Regrets on Parting with

My Old Dressing Gown.” In it, he confessed a line that still cuts deep today:

“I was the absolute master of my old dressing gown, but I have become a slave to my new