Yellow-handed

Red hair, yellow mittens and what I first thought were ankle-wrap ballet-inspired shoes but turned out to be argyle socks is why I started down this road.  Need of glasses is the least of my problems because I'm filled with self-loathing for excluding and passive-aggressively dissing her friend for not wearing blogger magnets like long shins.  That's my story and I'm sticking by it.

loss of extremities is invigorating!

Dang, her hands fell off due to cold but what a trooper -- she thought to dress cute and a little bit tribal knowing she's going to have this ensemble on til she learns to shimmy out of the tights.   And this must be one of those new hands-free bikes: It works on a get-the-hell-out-of-my-way principle much like driving and stops as if reading your mind when you hit someonething. I hope Little Red Riding Hat got to grandma's house with her goodies intact.

friends with boots

It's a new social phenomena, and yours truly is on it.  Remember a few posts ago (or in planet earth time, about two months ago), the woman in the completely untamed leopard coat "given" to her by her friend?  Here we have another incident of a friend, motivated by being swung around by the arms until the centrifugal force flung the boots from her feet like some sort of medieval weapon pure altruism, "gave" the lucky beneficiary above the corseted, scalloped, fifty shades of grey boots. 

Probably.

I need to get new friends.  Or a gun and mask.

hot helmut

 

If this isn't the coolest way to survive the kind of cold like banging your frozen shins on cold steel, pain rattling up cubes of vertebrae along an exposed nerve, a dry cold, an abattoir -- I'm just not acclimated, that's all -- then I don't know squat.  Hush already.  Black and spare, the coat expresses the philosophy of our favorite Austrian, the Von Trapps  Helmut Lang.  The little envelope bag provides some levity because it's by Catherine Malandrino, the Betsey Johnson of designers who use black.  The final piece of armor in the Specter of Winter are some corner-lovin Frye harness boots.  This look eats nails for breakfast, AND YET...

 how cute is she?  This is Jennifer, a Healthy Hair Care Specialist.  She made that dimple herself, and also the kindergarten bangs, which is how you get rid of really long dreds.  Put on a nose ring, tie in some chick yellow, tuck your face in and go.

She's the main man at Hair.e.tic Salon, www.arielou.com, and member in good standing of the witness protection program. Oops.

sharp dressed man

Am I just not seeing well-dressed hommes? It's such a rare event and yet, I feel like my eyeballs are pretty much on high alert. Example A above --  it took approx a nanosecond, a cobalt cardigan and some rolled chinos to activate stalking mode. Tria denied being in any arm of the design business but said he is into fashion -- this is just an everyday sartorial expression. He dresses this way to go to the credit union. I am even now marking the credit union with a blue XY on my 1:420,000 National Fash-Map as a likely fishing spot.  And he is now closing his account there. Unintended consequences.

le artiste

Here we are on the Left Bank. Of Grand Ave.  The pops of red, including her gorgeously nuanced hair?  The linen frock coat? The insouciant silk scarf? Tres Parisienne, non? She is in fact a graphic designer. And I do not in fact speak French.

blue hair

She has punked the little old ladies who lunch at the Lex by a factor of 12 or so.  This is semi-permanent dye that's layered on top of the previous semi-faded purple with greater concentration in some places than others, so there's six kinds of color gradation.  Yes, I like the contrast with her gold hat and the natural animal on the coat collar, but pure D great is the perfectly matching Barbie blue eyeshadow.

chin up, man

Yes, this is a model (and we're not even in Meatpacking!) in perfect skin, waxed red denim pants and some boots I might have been willing to sell my soul for...  IF... I was not drawn off by the effing Chihuahua up to his/her radar-friendly ears in purse.  We chatted, I touched her pants, gushed about her boots and took a couple pictures and the dog (and I use that term loosely) never made a peep.  Maybe because it is crazily treading lipsticks and phones and keys and pizza (I know I am not the only person who keeps pizza in their purse) in a desperate attempt to keep its head above bag.  The dog is not even upholstered in awesome red pants, in fact, its wardrobe is pretty bland, but I can't look away.  Freda is absolutely stealing the show.

I dream of Ina

 

This is as close as I will ever get to the business side of this molded marvel of 26 yards of silk, pleated and compressed under approx. 471 PSI to create visual tension. Or attention. Dang, she wears it well, right?  There are two reasons I am still in ownership of my front teeth after this invasion of personal space -- 1) I share DNA with this person and 2) I got a signed release.  We were enchanted with the 14 covered buttons until we discovered they're not for affect, they're for crazy-making.  Theoretically functional, the only way into and out of this beast.  My fingers cramped up on me and the staff here at Ina (more on Ina below) had to take over.  Thirty-five minutes later, I took the photo, we plunged our hands into ice water to bring down the inflammation, popped a couple Wal-profen and began the unbuttoning process.  In the event that you do not have a staff of six to gird your loins, the woman at Ina whose career as a concert pianist is now over, suggested swirling the buttons around to the front for the operation.  Due to the fitted nature of the garment, I could foresee a somewhat painful repositioning of most of the dermal elements of your torso along with the skirt.

Two big names I'd like to drop here are Burberry Prorsum (the skirt) and Ina (the shop).  Is it just me, or can you not get the image of a nasty possum wearing a really nicely cut trenchcoat with its skinny pink tail dragging behind out of your mind?  Hello marketing department? You're fired! 

Ina, inanyc.com, is a designer consignment store.  Second only to model/actress in libelous overstatement, most designer consignment stores are filled with Ann Taylor Loft and Limited. Collection. Ugh. Not so Ina.  In its five locations spread across the length and breadth of lower Manhattan, Ina walks the walk, chock-a-block with Lanvin, Gucci, Margiela, Fendi, YSL, Chanel, Balenciaga, Etro, Prada, and yes, the super-fierce possum.  Things are still $735 but that represents an 80% depreciation after one sashay down the runway during which the clothes tried but failed to make contact with the model's body.  If for some reason you can't make it to any of the five Ina locations, no worries -- you can shop online at the website or on Ebay.  Though the prices were somewhat higher than my mortgage, it was extremely gratifying to see the designer category honored, and it was very exciting to see these pieces before the accumulated wear and tear and bodily fluids of several raves and a long weeekend in Las Vegas lands them at the Goodwill. Where I normally find them.

in America

Here we are enjoying a loovly day (read: a day that does not have a weather event with a name) outside Central Park and her awful friends, who are out of frame stage right lending some helpful commentary, had just mocked her style.  Whereupon I stumbled in and said I liked her style. Isn't that the way?  That's the great thing about America: Everyone's entitled to his/her opinions, misguided as they may be.  I was on my way to the Whitney Museum to put that paradigm to the ultimate test. Was Wade Guyton's large scale, exhaustive exhibit of printer errors using only the letter X truly a groundbreaking study of our changing relationships with images through the use of common digital technology, or simply BS?  Remember, there are no wrong answers. And no refunds of the $12 admission fee.

L.A.M.B. at the farmer's market

Ok, we're going to learn things and it won't even be fun painful. Her voluminous clan of the kale seekers cloak has stacks of swagger and an acronym -- L.A.M.B. by Gwen Stefani. According to  know-it-alls on the internets, L.A.M.B. stands for Love Angel Music Baby which makes sense if you are drunk Gwen Stefani. No one has thought to ask Her Platinum-ness but rumors are that she had a dog named Lamb as a child or that her Harajuku friends were named Love, Angel, Music and Baby.  These are obviously the natterings of kitty litter huffers.

With all my connections in the pop music industry, I have it on good authority that Ms. Stefani started out with her core values -- Loins Are My Business.  Later a retail consultant insisted that, in consumer parlance, no one would be able to read it unless it was spelled correctly as Loins R My Business.  Rushed for time, Stefani just read off the list of stuff she was going to pick up at Target  -- love, angel, music, baby.  Baby was first on the list but BLAM? Ridiculous! 

I do not mind my own business

Lookit, a New Yorker standing still!  We're waiting for the free shuttle to Manhattan as the subways were still (12 hours after the storm) not working.  It took MTA a little while to get Moses on the job but dang I was super impressed with his efficiency.  Word from the inside is that the East River was a cinch compared to the Red Sea,  more of a butter knife operation what with the viscosity and all.  Being an infidel, I worried about which side of the Jew/Pharoah's army conflict I might fall. When the trains started running, I thought about this as we went real slow under the East River. I may have said Sholom and Oy vey several times.

I digress.

I thought to use my waiting on line time wisely by getting up in other's business! Hurray! If there's anything that riles me up it's a turban.  And when it's a turban on the very tippy top of a real male model-y bean swaddled in pumpkin colored outerwear (which I cranked up to make my point) and nice kicks, well,  predictably, I babbled and took a couple pictures without turning on the camera.  As you would.  This nice young man was apparently unarmed is an artist in training at Cooper Union.

the requisite view-from-behind photo

At first glance this would appear to be someone on her way to work on Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn.  And it is.  Ok, the tiniest bit anticlimactic but I always try to take one on-the-fly photo in NYC and the factors (there were factors) that urged me to put the piece of pizza back in my purse and exchange it for a camera were: bouncy curly hair, crossbody bag, nice proportion between the 3/4 length coat and flat shoes and particularly, the spectators.  Which you must imagine based on the snazzy two-tone heel.  See how her coat and tights look like the asphalt, utterly lacking in detail?  They were in fact formless blobs of blackish grey. They most certainly did not when I saw them with my own watering-from-cold eyeballs.  She was walking really fast and I was losing ground, thus was forced to zoom the living daylights out of the picture. Note to Santa: I have been very bad. Please bring me some proper stalking equipment, preferably one of those fancy new pizza-proof lenses.

something to think about before indulging in reckless pattern mixing

 

First off, why didn't I pursue a career as an intravenous drug user?

But on with my didactic message.  In my book, patterns are not just for hernia trusses anymore. The above declaration of independence from rational living is an actual reproduction of an ensemble I trotted out in NYC.  If you stare at it and scroll up and down real fast, you'll hurl. Or suddenly be able to curl your tongue. Anyway, aside from causing some confusion for the TSA agent charged with getting up in my business (What is that? And is it detachable, she asked, and I trust she was talking about the traditional Hmong pleated hospital gown and not my ass),  it was comfortable and warm and brought to mind Tommy Hilfiger and J Peterman and a Scottish schoolboy holding hands and singing I Like To Go Awandering as they skip through a Deer Hunter-esque miasma.  This makes me very happy.

HOWEVER
Clothes are contextual.  At home, for example, our ex-dog Rascal would not have blinked an eye at this atrocity (he was blind) but as it happened, I was having a post-Sandy look-see about lower Manhattan.  Everything seemed quite normal, which is to say, guys in slim-cut suits and professionally knotted cashmere scarves on their cellphones, seldom inconvenienced by anything as insignificant as a natural disaster because, like Goldman Sachs, they have their own generator that powers their gold-plated WaterPic and their nail buffing protocol. So their cuticles are sublime.  And there were some people wearing Duane Reade bags.  I would like to say that this happened on Mulberry Street but I had just crossed Mulberry so I think it was Houston when a grizzled man wearing five or six coats and a sleeping bag gave a compassionate nod as he approached and said, "Hang in there man."

Hooti Couture

Meet Alison, proprietor of Hooti Couture on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn, answering the oft-asked question of what to wear when biking to work. It was asked a lot ofter those days when the subways were not functioning.  A helmet goes without saying, this one channeling a foot soldier circa 1851 with plenty of room up top to keep your hair or a calzone and knitted earflaps so parts don't fall off in the cold.  Feathered fetlocks excite me and caused me to lurch forward and raise my camera.  I don't really think Alison has over-exfoliated her thoracic region -- there was this post-apocalyptic glare of sun burning through the ozone.  If this photo is examined by a qualified physician, you won't have to get that chest x-ray after all Alison.

Hooti Couture's motto is Vintage For Everyone and there is stacks of good stuff, so everyone (and you know who you are) should get on down and claim their knitted knickers or tulle sportcoat.

color me easily amused

Give me a pair of irradiated pants and a purple n pink book bag and green-green-my-arms-are-green and I'm satisfied.  As far as I know. 

There are some whiplash-inducing shifts in chronology and geography going on here -- my OCD is flaring up something awful -- but now that we have finished the business at the U of M, we can move on to my eagerly awaited NYC experience in which I discovered how my current lifestyle is perfectly sustainable in a post-apocalyptic world. This is something I have in common with Donald Trump, Britney and most of the insect phylum.

here's what I found at the Quincy Street Sallie Army

Mr. Rogers and Lady Gaga.  Mmmmmmm, contrast. This is what I love about Brooklyn.  Yes friends, I've ventured out of the 651 area code, and my rods and cones have not stopped jumping around.  However we are in a post-Sandy world, which is to say,  we're all humming You're The One That I Want and trying to decide how we feel about John Travolta.  Be patient sick people, my internet access will be limited, but for now, I'm buttering my legs and shimmying into some tight shiny black pants and some hair.