This week we're starting a monthly focus on our incredible MAISON 10 community, celebrating the diverse talents, colorful personalities, and beautiful souls that make this so much more than a store – we consider you all family.
First up, the brilliant Alvin Hall, financial guru, activist, broadcaster, writer ...
1. I’ve been lucky enough in my life to have three incredible careers …
My first career is working on Wall Street, developing and teaching training courses for financial services companies about the investment markets — the products, processes, and regulations. Today I do this work primarily online. My second career is in the United Kingdom, giving financial guidance on television programs and in print. And my third career is writing books and articles about personal finance, as well as culture.
I’m currently working on a BBC program about the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. For decades it was called the Tulsa Riots, but it turns out it was a deliberate killing of Black people in Greenwood, Oklahoma, by a deputized mob. The breadth of the terror is astonishing, as is how long it was kept secret. Even people who lived in Greenwood did not talk about the massacre for decades.
I’m also writing a companion book for my 10-episode podcast series “Driving the Green Book,” which was produced by Macmillan Podcasts. I developed the series after doing a single-episode program on BBC Radio 4 called “The Green Book.” I knew from the people we met during the production of that program that there was still a bigger, more nuanced story to be told.
2. I’m becoming more of an activist as I get older …
After my grandmother died, and then my mother a few years later, I felt the freedom to be more active in ways that were important to me. During their lifetimes, I knew it was very important for me to protect myself so that I stayed alive and didn’t die before them. So I never did anything that was incredibly risky, and especially not life-threatening. However, when they died, I recognized that I could be risky in my mind, I could be risky in my career, I could take risks overall that I would never have taken before.
3. The day I discovered MAISON 10 …
I was walking down 29th St, and I smelled an incense that was burning outside the shop door. I thought: "This smells better than nice.” I came in, met Henri. We started talking about the shop and its concept. I just got it – I understood the store. It was intriguing to me. I think I bought something on that first visit; probably the incense – Forest Floor. It’s still my favorite incense by far.
Quite a while ago, I bought a very small, grey bowl. I really love that bowl — the way it looks, the way it feels. It’s one of the items I keep on my desk. I’ll put a paper clip in it. Or, if I’m eating lunch, I’ll put olive pits in it. I use it for all sorts of different purposes. But in truth, the bowl is a symbol of my relationship to Tom and Henri. I think just having this simple, elegant bowl is a nice way of keeping their energy, spirit, and humor in my daily life. They are great guys. During my walks for exercise and to do chores in the area, I like dropping by the shop just to catch-up chat with them, to have a laugh.
4. If I wasn’t living in NY …
I once had the opportunity to move to London and I didn’t take it. I’m not a person who looks back with regret at all. But every once in a blue moon, I think: “What would my life have been like had I made that move?”
5. The people I admire most in the world …
I read James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on a Mountain at Yale Summer High School in 1969. I still have the very copy I read. That book was like reading my own life. It moved me deeply. It spoke to my soul then, and still does. It’s probably the book I read most often.
As a small-town Southerner in so many ways, I read Eudora Welty frequently. Her short stories are profoundly Southern and capture something really personal, quirky, and subtly humorous about small-town life in the South.
One other book is Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. That book probably helped me release myself from many of my own repressions. I learned to relax into me, and accept me for everything that I was, am, and will become.
6. The quality I admire most in other people …
Trustworthiness. I used to say loyalty, but at some point I realized that if a person is trustworthy, then they are also loyal and reliable. I’ve had tough times and good times. I’ve experienced how casually and indifferently people can cast aside trust. I keep quite a bit of emotional distance between myself and people who I sense will not be trustworthy.
7. What I think about when I think of the word ‘Love’
Trust. My dear, long-time friend, Martha Flax, once said to me: “In you, trust and love are the same emotions.” I had never thought about this, but her observation is so true. Looking back at all of my friendships and relationships made me understand exactly what she saw in and articulated about me so quickly. I am incapable of loving anyone I can’t trust. I can be friendly with many people. I can be fond of many people. I can be civil to many people. But there are few people that I truly know I can trust and therefore love.
8. If there was an Olympics for everyday activities, I’d win gold in walking …
During the pandemic, I walked five to ten miles every day. My podiatrist recommended that I limit it to “three to five” miles because my “joints weren’t happy” with the longer distances. I walk at a rather quick pace. My friend Damon Brandt says its somewhere between walking and running. On these walks, I enjoy seeing the old and new buildings, watching how neighborhoods are being transformed, looking at the people who go by, feeling the energy of street life in every area of a city. I think this is actually a variation on a trait I had when I was growing up in rural Florida. I used to walk through the trails and the forest around our house. It was endlessly fascinating to me then, just as being on the streets of a city is today. There are always discoveries, like the day I came across MAISON 10.
9. My proudest moment …
My parents, being Baptist and very religious, always said: “Pride comes before the fall.” I heard this a lot growing up. I’m not sure I have given myself permission to feel pride very often about my life or work — even when I’ve created or achieved something that garners lots of accolades. In 2019, I received the Alumni Service Award from my alma mater Bowdoin College. It came as a total surprise. That made me proud. The award came from an institution that remains important to me. I felt it represented the many people in the college community who had been so supportive of me, who had truly cared for me. While I was being given the award, it wasn’t about me in my mind. I was glad that I had made all the people, dead and living, who had believed in me, who helped me, proud. I felt every one of their spirits that day. I remember feeling overwhelmed in a good way.
10. Words of advice for young Alvin …
Learn to forgive yourself. I was pretty strict with myself for years. I often came across as formal and stiff — very set in my ways. I was very much aware that I needed to relax, to be more flexible, more go-with-the flow. I began to change when I moved to New York. I had much less control of parts of my life and that was good to experience. I had a wider, more diverse group of friends. I learned so much from them, from how much of their lives they shared with me. I learned not to hold on to past mistakes, to forgive myself, to start anew. Not being trapped by the past gave me a wonderful freedom about my future. I also learned about the importance of luck in life! I would say to my younger self: grab luck when it comes along because you have the hunger and the drive to make it work out for the best, and you can never tell what other opportunities it will lead to.