Wrapped Up: Pre-Fall 2013

I went into this season ready for the coats. Ready for my New England roots to wash away all sense and for my thoughts to be taken over by coats and more coats and even greater coats. After the malaise that set in during the Spring/Summer 2013 season, any excitement was welcomed.

Many of the themes this year were the same as those from years past. That is expected. And though I'd like to buy heaps and bundles of new coats every year, the point is to invest in a piece that lasts, that can see you through the ever-changing (and ever-repeating) trends.

There were, of course, the black coats. But none of them were basic. All had a detail that drew the eye. Larger than life buttons. Soft leather. A hint of fur.

At Burberry Prorsum

At MaxMara

At Chloé

At Calvin Klein

At Lanvin

Then there were those classic coats in classic colors. Peacoats. Trenches. Some stayed incredibly true to their roots while others were deconstructed to the point that only from head on were their origins recognizable.

At Belstaff

At Gucci

At Tory Burch

At Chloé

At Burberry Prorsum

At Jean Paul Gaultier

At 3.1 Phillip Lim

Some of the coats, like so much of fashion, were about playing with extremes. There were those that were stripped back and almost austere.

At Sportmax

At Thakoon Addition

At Balenciaga

At Reed Krakoff

At Stella McCartney

At Narciso Rodriguez

They played side by side with the oversized and the exaggerated.

At Gucci

At Carven

At Jean Paul Gaultier

At Céline

At Costume National

At Rochas

At Louis Vuitton

At Donna Karan

The prints and patterns that appeared this season were bigger and bolder than those seen last year.

At BCBG Max Azria

At Sonia Rykiel

At Burberry Prorsum

At Stella McCartney

At Louis Vuitton

At Belstaff

At Carven

And every variation of every color could be found, from the pastel to the neon to the richly saturated.

At Ports 1961

At Jenni Kayne

At Balenciaga

At Honor

At Chloé

At Carven

At Misha Nonoo

The malaise has officially lifted.


Photos via

Fresh Starts

A few days ago as I was catching my breath otherwise known as sprawling out on my bed, staring at the ceiling, and enjoying the silence, I realized something. I didn't feel like writing about London or Milan or Paris this season. It was hard enough grasping for straws in New York. Maybe I could give myself a break. Maybe I could ignore the rest altogether.

Things have been crazy. Not bad crazy necessarily (though there was some of that because, really, let’s think about whose life this is) but dizzying and distracting crazy. A pile of fashion magazines dating back to the all-important September issues sits unread in a corner of my room. A number of pre-Fall 2013 collections have already been shown. Some of the pieces that rest in my Spring/Summer 2013 bookmark folders have started to sneak their way into stores.

So I've decided to give it up. To skip the last three cities. And, most importantly, to not beat myself up about it. I spent most of my childhood and adolescence associating moving on or changing direction with failure. But life outside of school has taught me otherwise. And if forcing myself to write a few blog posts that not that many people read is going to make my hair start falling out, it’s not worth it. It's not failure. It’s simply honesty.

So I’ll read my magazines and start again with pre-Fall and not worry or stress about it like I do about so much else. About almost everything else. And I’ll tell you, like I do almost every year, what I’d like to wear on New Year’s Eve. Sure I’ll probably just closet dive and pick something long forgotten, but if I had my way, I would be wearing one of these two variations on a theme.

Prim and Proper

Trim and Chic

Either one would start me well on the road to temporarily forgetting that I have to work at 10 AM on New Year's Day.

Photos via, via

The Leftovers: New York Fashion Week SS13

It’s almost December. I had to finally break down this week and buy a new pair of gloves. (My gloves never last a cold weather season. Sometime around mid-February I lose them and make due by shoving my hands deep into my pockets until spring arrives.) With the approach of the year’s end, I’ve been thinking about what hasn’t been done, what’s left to do.

I was trying to pinpoint why I’d left things dormant here. Why I hadn’t been able to muster the concentration to finish my roundups for the Spring/Summer 2013 season. The root cause is boredom. Boredom can be a dirty word. It is one used often by those who can’t be moved by even the most dazzling things. One often seen as a personal fault of a person with too high expectations.

I haven't lost the ability to be shocked. To be drawn into something. To be left speechless. I simply have too long of a memory. I can pinpoint when I’ve seen this trend or that. When I’ve seen one silhouette or another. And my mind wanders. Not that I didn’t love some pieces, that I didn’t want them to instantly appear in my closets, but I just can’t bring myself to write about the abundance of white when I wrote about it not that long ago. I still can’t, years later, get my head around leather as a trend for the warmer weather months. And I don't need to see another peplum for a very long time.

In pre-Fall, there were coats. In Fall/Winter, there were film noir lady villains. In Resort, there was a shifting of definitions as well as an abundance of suiting. But for Spring/Summer, there was a void. At least there was for me. Of course this ambivalence could all be put down to end of the year restlessness, but I feel like it’s more than that.

So simply presented in the order that they tumbled into my bookmark folder, here are the pieces from the Spring/Summer 2013 New York season that fascinated me.

At Kimberly Ovitz

At Jenni Kayne

At Steven Alan

At Erin Fetherston

At Peter Som

At Rachel Comey

At 10 Crosby Derek Lam

At Gary Graham

At Tocca

At Suno

At Jen Kao

At Cushnie et Ochs

At Monique Lhuillier

At Duro Olowu

At Timo Weiland

At DKNY

At Thakoon

At Thom Browne

At Donna Karan

At Pamella Roland

At Mandy Coon

At Jil Sander Navy

At Araks

At Tory Burch

At The Row

At Michael Kors

At Elizabeth and James

At Reed Krakoff

At Philosophy

At Marchesa

At Bibhu Mohapatra

At A.L.C.

At Band of Outsiders

Oh, and then there was this.


At Oscar de la Renta

Maybe things will be better in London.


Photos via