The phrase costs a pretty penny winds back through time, its roots tangled in an era when wealth was measured in coinage, when the shiniest, unblemished pennies—newly minted, unspoiled by time—held an almost poetic allure. To spend a pretty penny was to part with something valuable for something worthy. It signified discernment, a knowing hand selecting finery over frugality, artistry over approximation.
And what of the opposite? An ugly penny? That, too, exists. It’s the indifferent drugstore dupe that betrays you before noon, the foundation that creases in laughter lines you weren’t even making, the lipstick that bleeds like a broken heart. It’s the shortcut that, in the end, is no shortcut at all—just a path leading straight back to the mirror, fixing, blotting, sighing.
A pretty penny is not wasted; it is well spent. To pay it is to honor beauty—not the kind dictated by trend cycles, but the kind that feels like a second skin, the kind that lingers in memory. Because true beauty, indulgent and intoxicating, is not for the careless. It is for the connoisseur.