Image Credit: Geneva O’Hara

For the full interview, head over to our Substack to read more.

Olivia Evans is a brilliant thinker, writer, stylist, and happens to be my best friend. I interviewed her on Thursday, 14 August 2025 to glean her insights on introspection, love, and her favourite hobbies and media. Get to know Liv in this piece, and via her Substack.

EVA: Can you tell me about your summer so far?

LIV: I mean, it’s been quite reflective. I think it’s been one of the toughest summers. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about myself and things that have happened. I think it’s been really nice. It was very far from the summer I was expecting, just being at home, but it was really nice to spend a lot of time with my family and kind of be present. It took me back a lot to my childhood summers because I wasn’t out and about. It was just me and my brother and my mom and my dad. So, it’s cute, kind of nostalgic.

EVA: You’ve said to me before that you were spending more time alone, and getting better at being by yourself as you have been in previous parts of your life. 

LIV: Yeah, definitely. And I think trying not to distract myself from feeling. Like being alone, but being alone and being present. That was really important. And also grieving a lot of things that I thought would happen that didn’t happen, which is quite an important process. 

EVA: I feel like grief is the toughest one.

LIV: Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

EVA: Can you describe your home in Suffolk?

LIV: It’s very much… [she pauses.] I was waiting (tables) at a dinner party the other day and this guy asked me where I’m from in Suffolk, and I said Benhall, which is the little town, and he said it’s a lot like the Cotswolds. It reminds him of that. My house is in the middle of nowhere, it’s all fields and it’s a really beautiful place to grow up. It definitely shaped my childhood a lot. Me and my brother kind of grew up without a TV, so we just had books and the outdoors. It was a really safe place to grow up, so we could just go out and run around and make dens, and it gave us the space to be whatever we wanted, I think because there was no outside influence whatsoever.

EVA: That reminds me of something I read on Substack, about how kids don’t play outside anymore. When they hear, ‘Go play,’ they play online.

LIV: Yeah, I used to hate [Suffolk] because I couldn’t really go anywhere at all, like my friends from London (that we moved from) would be going to theme parks or whatever, but we were kind of stuck. But we weren’t really stuck, and it was really, really nice. We would just make adventure maps and go and play in the countryside in between the wheat fields and climb trees.

EVA: You’re reminding me of this picture. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, it’s this girl playing chess with a crow in the 1800s, and the retweet was something like “Nothing else to do back then.”

LIV: Literally, yeah, those were basically the vibes. We just used to dig up bones in the back of our garden. I had a little museum of rat bones that I dug up.

EVA: That’s so funny.

LIV: Yeah, I think it’s very peaceful. It definitely wasn’t when I was a teenager. It was really hard. If you couldn’t drive, you couldn’t go anywhere. There wasn’t anything to do. But now, I find it very peaceful.

EVA: That’s just kind of a tough age to be alive. I felt the same thing. Like when you’re 14, and you’re not close to being able to drive. So it’s just like, okay… can I go grocery shopping?

LIV: No, and then my mom has to drive me, and she gets frustrated.

EVA: “My mom can pick us up if your mom can bring us there.”

LIV: Yeah, no, literally.

EVA: Your recent Substack article on Geneva, Switzerland reminded me of a quote from one of my favorite movies, Call Me By Your Name (2017). The line was, “is it better to speak to die?” And the film is kind of a two-hour method of answering, “to speak,” which is what I got from your article as well. So I wanted to ask you in more detail for your answer to that question.

LIV: I have so much to say about that. I think, for me, it’s always more important to speak than to not speak. I think telling or showing people that you care, no matter the circumstances, is really important. I think the main thing about it is – why do you want to speak? What are your reasons behind speaking? Like are you looking for something, or are you just expressing how you feel… But I think when we don’t speak, we lose a part of ourselves. I mean, I thought about it for “to speak or to die,” because I feel like we’re constantly dying in a way. And when you do speak, you lose a part of yourself that had the hope, maybe, of something. But I think it’s really important to think about why, why am I asking this question? Why do I want to tell this person how I feel? What do I want to come from it? So, I always think it’s better to speak…

EVA: Definitely.

LIV: …and lose them, even if it hurts to lose them. Even if I wished at the start, in the context of my article [referring to ending a relationship earlier this year] that it never happened in the first place, I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t had that experience. If that makes sense.

EVA: I think it’s tough to move on if you don’t speak.

LIV: Exactly. Because you never get the clarity you deserve. But I do think it’s really important that people think before they speak, especially when in love. I think if you’re asking yourself a question, it shouldn’t be, “Is this person going to reject me? What’s going to happen if I do speak?” it should be, “Why?” Am I trying to make myself feel better, or do I genuinely want them to know how I feel? It’s important to know that you’re the love that you give, and not the love you receive. So, even if I give all my love to the other person and they don’t give it back, that’s not my problem. They weren’t in a place to receive it. I am the love I gave to them, not the love they gave me back.

EVA: I feel like that’s similar to what you said about someone’s motivation for speaking, how it should be considerate of the other person. And that the notion is to give, and not to receive, if they’re not in a place to give back.

LIV: For sure. I think often we rush [to speak] because it’s really important. I’m a deeply emotional person, but I think I can often get caught up in my emotions. I don’t always think logically. It’s important to weigh up both. You would want to find a middle ground always. Does that make sense?

EVA: Yeah – not following the impulse, but not letting it pass you by. Not pushing the feeling down, but not acting purely based on instinct.

LIV: Yeah, definitely. I think the whole point of life is to love. That the whole point is to experience love. Giving other people love, that’s the whole point to me. I feel like that’s what my life and purpose is like, to find connection and show up with people that I care about.

EVA: That’s a good philosophy. Everything is about love. Even things – like anger, as we talked about – come from a place of fear and sadness. But the motivation behind those things is always love, like if you don’t receive it or can’t give it in the way that you want.

LIV: Or you haven’t in the past. Like craving it. But I think that indifference is the furthest from that. If someone is angry at you, it shows that they care. If someone is sad about something, they care. It’s when they’re indifferent, that they don’t care.

Pictured above: One of Liv’s journals (discussed in-depth later) with the fortune, “NEVER REGRET. NEVER EXPLAIN & NEVER APOLOGISE.” While going through her journals, Liv confided that she aimed never to regret things in her life.

EVA: So, since we’re talking about movies – who’s your favourite director?

LIV: I would say either Sofia Coppola or Greta Gerwig.

EVA: Why?

LIV: Little Women (2019), for sure, is a childhood favourite of mine. I love it so much. Any time I’m really sad, it’s a rewatch for me. 100%. I love the colour grading as well, the way that it switches timelines and all the parallels. I never had sisters, and I always really wanted sisters. My mum has four sisters, and I just loved the girlhood vibe of the movie. It also really reminded me of my childhood, like the way that they would play, performand just run around in the countryside.

EVA: For sure.

LIV: I just really like the way she did it compared to other Little Women films, because the book is also really close to my heart. But the way she did it, it really feels like you’re a part of the main female relationships.

EVA: The colour grading especially.

LIV: It’s incredible.

EVA: Because they reach a part of the movie where they go back in time less as they grow up, and so naturally they don’t go back. They never go back to the warm, kind of autumnal looking colours. It winters later on. And then they’ve grown up. I cry like a baby.

LIV: I cry every time. But that’s the thing I love most about the movie, is I feel like I’m laughing and I’m crying. I feel so many emotions. 

EVA: You feel like you’re them.

LIV: It also shows how, the older they get, the bigger their problems get. And that’s something I’ve talked a lot about with my mum because she would say, “Big kids, big problems. Small kids, small problems.” And how everyone says when you’re younger, everything’s easier, but you don’t realize. And you say, “I wish I could be younger and just carefree.” And my problems could just be that one girl said she didn’t like my skirt, and that’s the biggest deal.

EVA: It seems like Amy goes through that more than anyone else. Jo’s problems are pretty similar the whole time, ironically enough.

LIV: I think the most about the line where she’s talking about women, but then her mum asks her if she cares more to love or be loved, and she says she wants to be loved. And I think that really stuck with me. I wrote in my journal about that, because it’s so interesting to make sure we differentiate between wanting to love and wanting to be loved. But I feel that deeply. When you get lonely, you just want to be loved.

EVA: Yeah, I love that quote. But it seemed like it tormented her the whole time.

LIV: Yeah, it did.

EVA: The quote that I love is one of Amy’s. Laurie says something boyish to her, a reaction of her saying something maybe cold about love because she has to marry for money instead, at that point in the story. And Laurie says, “I think the poets might disagree.” And she responds, “I’m not a poet. I’m just a woman.”

LIV: Yeah, and when she says, “I want to be great, or I want to be nothing.”

LIV: Yeah, for sure.

EVA: What’s something that makes you nervous?

LIV: I feel like I don’t really get nervous. I get nervous-excited. Kind of like that holiday, “I just got off a flight and I’m in a new city” feeling. But then it’s like, I don’t know if that’s really nervous. Like when you are first really interested in someone, and you get those nervous butterflies when you’re going on a first date. I don’t think I get nervous, but when I get anxiety, it’s crushing. I have deep, irrational fears. But I don’t think I really get nervous.

EVA: You don’t really strike me as someone who would get nervous a lot. You’re very chill.

LIV: Oh really?

EVA: How would you describe your style, and its influences?

LIV: I would say my style has changed significantly. I started curating my style when I was about 16. In a lot of places in the UK, you start having to wear your own clothes to school at that age, and I remember the first time I had to go back into school, I said, crap, I don’t have anything to wear! I was just used to being at home in my ugly M&S t-shirts that my mom would get me and trainers. So that was kind of where it started, having to dress myself every day. I think my style now – like you said, what do you think your style is? – I try not to put my style into a box. I think when I was first finding my personal style, aesthetics and trends online were really important because I could take things about my personality and relate them to the different aesthetics. Being sporty was something I kind of found in my personality that I could relate to an aesthetic. For example, ‘academia core,’ or whatever.

EVA: ‘Dark academia,’ yeah.

LIV: I could take from those. But now I really try not to get sucked into aesthetics too much, and I don’t really like Pinterest either, because I feel like it’s such a curated view. I try to take my inspiration most from people around me. There was this girl, when I worked at Waitrose, who’d come in every week at the same time. She always had the best outfits, and had so many pieces. She doesn’t even know it because I’ve never spoken to her, but there’s so many pieces I found that she’s worn. 

EVA: Like a real life Pinterest board.

LIV: I think my mum also had an influence on my fashion. She’s always been very against big labels, and all for a simple, kind of French look. She worked in fashion, so that probably helps. But she also never tried to direct me. I’ve eventually gotten to a style that’s very similar to hers, but when I was 16, 17, and really finding my style, I went through a lot of different things and she never tried to change what I was wearing to fit what she felt looked good. I like to mix a lot of street style with French chic. I often dress how I feel. Personal style is so interesting because it’s such a way to express yourself and how you feel.

EVA: Okay, last question: You once told me you have a plethora of journals chronicling your life. Can you tell me more about your experience with journaling?

LIV: I started journaling in 2023, and it really picked up in September 2023 when I had to re-sit my A-Levels. I was quite lonely because a lot of my friends had moved on. And I was experiencing a bit of anxiety, and I also feel like I forgot a lot of memories and that was one of the main reasons that I started. I started with no rules. I said, this journal is blank, so it has no lines, and it can be whatever I want. The only rule is that I have to be truthful, because nobody else is going to see it.

Image Credit: Liv’s photo of her journals, taken on her Fujifilm camera.

LIV, cont.: I could write the worst thing about somebody else, or something about myself or something I did that’s insane. And I hope nobody finds out that I did it, but I have to be truthful. It was a great way for me to work through my emotions and express creativity. I’ll sketch, make collages, write poetry or just something about my day, or rage about something that’s pissed me off. But I don’t have to write every day, and I only have it when I need it. It really helped me process my emotions and find out more about myself. If I’d see a quote on Instagram, I would write about how I thought about it, and I also tab all of my journals.

EVA: I love that.

LIV: I have them.

EVA: Really?

LIV: Because I thought, why not? I decorate them based on what I’m into at the time. That’s one of my favourite poems by Wendy Cope [on the journal cover]. ‘The Orange.’ 

EVA: That’s one of my favourites, too.

LIV: I think there’s two journals where I have poems at the front. There’s one by Mary Oliver, called ‘The Journey,’ and I feel like that just sums up the kind of thing I like to think about.

EVA: I like it in your writing. Have you read The Secret History?

LIV: I have read it!

EVA: I’m about halfway through, just past a part where one of the characters, who’s polylingual, writes his journals in Latin.

LIV: Oh, yeah, I remember that. I have French and German parts of my journal.

EVA: That’s very Swiss. I had a French dream journal, but it only has one entry. What perfume is that you’re wearing? I noticed it earlier.

LIV: It’s Luna. I have a little version here. When I went, I wanted to get Bluebell, which is what [Lady] Diana wore. 

EVA: Oh, she did?

LIV: Yeah, but they didn’t have it in stock. The lady was really helpful. I got it for the first time on my 16th or 17th birthday.

EVA: I love that. It’s rosy. Can I take a picture of it?

LIV: Yeah, of course, but it’s kind of dying.

EVA: It’s well-loved.

Pictured Above: Our final setup from the interview, featuring Liv’s well-loved Penhaligan’s perfume.