Enter Jane Doe, stage right, to take photos. She glances around a bit while fixing her jacket, and then continues walking. It was a breezy Friday evening and the fashionable crowd filling up SoHo was too cool to care about our giant camera.
It is, after all, New York City. On spring and summer weekends, most people in SoHo and the Meatpacking District are flaunting their inner fashion stylist, making our job of taking pictures of well-dressed civilians seem like a picnic.
As more and more exhibits of bright colors and bold statements walked by, I remembered my friend, Svetlana, a student and model. She always told me that the best fashion accessory one could ever have is the ability to not give a darn about looking different.
“Try it on first and apologize later,” she told me many times. This is the mode in which most New Yorkers seem to operate, and I gotta say, it’s working very well for them.
For accessory connoisseurs, these are exciting times to be in New York: hats, scarves, pooches, and all that jazz. If it feels right to rock a Rite-Aid bag, there’s nothing to apologize for, really.
Some parts of the Meatpacking District seemed to have gone back in time: a vintage Dodge, cigarettes, and Jackie-O shades. I guess it’s true what they say about fashion: the ones worth wearing will always come full circle. l
