To Be Cool in Contemporary

Fashion Week in New York really prevails where none other can because it is the only major city that provides a playing field that allows for different weight classes to bat at the same cage. I think I just used two sports metaphors to make one point but here’s the thing: New York shines a flashlight on contemporary wear where other cities are more prone to hit the same genre of collection over the head with that flashlight, treating it as though it were an incidental little sister instead of, frankly, the precise ammo that keeps the wheels of shopping — and therefore fashion — in motion.

But the best part, really, of contemporary fashion is that you’re given the opportunity to be so many different girls in an era when style really should be non-committal. That’s a point that is reflected in the recent work of Tory Burch, at least, who seemingly has no problem co-opting the cues of a sort of 1960’s university student, like she did for last fall, and then with the same ardor, traveling across time and space to a Moroccan tea lounge with prints that also call to mind the kind of Turkish rugs you can find at a bazaar in Istanbul to hang out with a group of women who are neither “leaning” nor standing vertically, but just existing in their own baths of power.

Worth mentioning is what the buffer between the two aforementioned collections looked like, which was a case study in marrying a kind of tribal flare to the sort of girl who might summer in Nantucket on weekends (and use summer as a veritable verb) but spend her weeks in a one bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side.

And why shouldn’t she? Isn’t that exactly what being a “modern” woman means today? Isn’t that what the spirit of a contemporary collection should evince? We are, after all, the “back-slash” generation and to assume that we can be placed in neat boxes where we are expected to flourish (or languish) is about as futile a want as a talking plant that can only say “Sack.”

If that’s not enough, I offer this: in a ribbed polo and fringe-trim skirt — two garments I plan to further explore as temperatures become more amenable — plus a color-blocked bucket bag, what experience is more rewarding than being typecast and subsequently presented with the opportunity to prove the stereotype wrong? Because, let’s be real here, people. I’m not nearly as cool as the clothes suggest I am.

In partnership with Tory Burch. Bucket bag pictured will be available later this spring.

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