I Want to Be Julia Sarr-Jamois

Hey! You there, miss, in the business casual outfit a fashion intern would slaughter for and the gym shoes your personal trainer just purchased on Zappos.

Yes, you, in the color, pattern and texture, looking not like a child running amuck in her mom’s closet and more like the oracle of personal style.

How do you do it?

Your Breton stripes and Art Deco skirt; your banana-print bottoms and athletic tops; your crosshatch fur and a wicker basket. I want in.

I want to wear sneakers and sweatshirts and designer skirts at once, aligning like the mythical cherry-cherry-cherry on a slot machine; a hopeful combination, but never a reality.

I want to be comfortable and stylish, a fortuitous empty promise that comes true wherever she lays her Swoosh-clad foot.

To look at her directly is to stare at a Magic Eye in the nanosecond as it begins to make sense — quizzical, approachable, mood-altering.

To gaze upon her textured coif is an inevitable precursor to swiveling in a salon chair.

To see her is to experience a once-in-a-lifetime secret. She is the chicken to an egg, the Harry to Hogwarts, the style to street.

Or whatever.

Her photos read like a textbook for figuring it out, while doubling as a puzzling guide to the incapability of cribbing her unparalleled style.

Did that facial decor come from a costume shop? Did that shoulder-slung sack come from Céline? Is it high end? High street? Something you repurposed from a dress-up box?

Nevermind where your garden grows, what does your closet look like? Is it organized by color, allowing you to be summoned by the rainbow collective on a daily basis? Or is it prioritized by event, the glitzy, detailed frocks clanging together whenever one is plucked off the rod to be taken out for a night on the town.

And even with a face so beautiful, hair so voluminous, legs so long, skin so glowing, it’s like staring into an eclipse.

I want to live.

Or do whatever it is that your sweatshirt is telling me to do.

Written by Carlye Wisel