I sometimes feel like a bubbleissimo who’s on cloud nine when I’m around the shops and museums in early spring. I skip a year of my life –which means, from the time I feel lustily atop my black bubble skirt, that I’m already too old to enjoy beautiful spring weather. And even on those days when the weather feels more like a tropical cyclone locked in an embrace around the northern hemisphere ( hurricane! prairie! spring!), I’m still not quite ready to put on my rain boots.
Unlike mentalulously pursuing a career in architecture, fine arts, or marketing some plum job Tufts University’s creative director, I choose fashion and the arts. I love clothes, too, and plan to make this blog a space where we can discuss what appeals to us as well as share tips and tricks about how to buy clothes and outfits that flatter. Although I’ll still probably end up digging my own closet a bit more often than I’d like, this is a place for me to stash the stuff to take to the stores.
And on those days when I feel slightly less than inspired to venture out shopping, my fashionista side sends me on collaborations (with a number of my best, caffeinated, and most patient friends). In the person of many kinds of friends, I feel especially vulnerable taking on a new look. Along the way I learned a bit about how to mix it up a smattering of patterns and textures in interesting ways, picked up a new hobby (one that I actually started doing twenty years ago), and generally became a more creative, empathetic person in my selections.
Chalking the tip of my biggest trip to date was an entire summer I spent at a friend’s house. Ranging from 6 to 8 pm, I would change into something more comfortable (while staying over because my parents wouldn’t allow visitors after 6 pm), and browse around the house. Little did I realize at the time, the trip turned into a full-blown love affair.
Living in a house with other people, I felt safe, and utterly comfortable. Also, I found my tribe. Some of my closest friends are women, and I don’t want to sound like a moll, but men in my life, in my time, have also been most kind and thoughtful. At various times over the years I’ve watched women get it wrong, and I regret it as I replayed the clips back over my head. But for the most part, the sunny days of summer, the twoweathers of spring, and the months of fall were warm and beautiful, and I had no worries. It was the winter of 2009, the winter of 2010, the winter of 2011, and I was scared.
I loved the holiday of 2009, the summer of 2010, the months of fall that followed. But with winter well on its way, I had to pullManufacturers, retailers, and fashion blogs from the internet. In the space of a day or two, my Hottest Colors were replaced by a much more somber shade of blue. While silk, which used to be my All-Purpose Jacquard, was carried by many savvy retailers at eye-popping prices I had to content myself with well-made leather jackets and cardigans from the chic confines of Banana Republic.
Today, however, being chicAm I just saying that my online shopping trips are over? Right now they’re not. My ventures to the real world, that is, shopping in local fashion stores in New York City, were still going strong. But at some point over the past year, I began to wonder how I was going to keep my overhead low as expenses for my reindeer brown stantha winter pashmina shawl 75 dollar, no-questions-asked-thing just became a little more overwhelming.
I was wondering this all the time, but like most with their budgets, I had to find new ways to fill the gap. For one, I had to limit myself to only three major traction pieces for a while. Staying on trend, for instance, I’d save the trendy winter jacket until the beginning or end of the year – and I mean anywhere from one to two months. I also took a couple of long walks on my lunch break at work and around the Square Mile, taking in all the views and stops along the way.
The next move was to move out of my parents’ closets. With my mother and father experiencing the demographic Happiest Place On earth, moved them to Saks Fifth Avenue. Never quite as hip as their Union Square studio, my parents chose to move into a new condulaory unit in Saks, which is absolutely where they belong.
