I came home from work today to find the September J.Crew catalog sitting by the door. In a row across the front cover were the ballerinas you see above, standing in first position, adorned, unexpectedly, in cozy, chunky sweaters.
The arrival of this catalog never fails to bring me joy. It's not that I buy anything, or even dog-ear the pages just in case. It's that, for me, there is nothing that quite compares to leafing through 143 pages of nothing but clothes.
Some people (okay, a lot of people) do not understand this, or find it shallow. In truth, it's hard for me to explain what exactly draws me to fashion in such an immediate way. There are times when I look at a particularly beautiful photograph of a dress, a coat, a pair of shoes, and literally gasp. There are times when I can't fall asleep because I'm putting together outfits in my head. So I thought about it for a while today, and here's what I came up with:
I have always been drawn to all kinds of art, and find it perpetually fascinating and inspiring. I want to surround myself with it, to have it in my home, on my stereo, and, in the case of clothing, on my back. This is because truly great design is something that lasts forever, something that anyone, from anywhere, can appreciate. And unlike other products of art and design, clothes are something that you truly experience your life in. We can't go naked (not here, anyway), so we wake up every morning and adorn ourselves in pieces that, no matter how simple, started as nothing more than an idea. Fashion is the ultimate collision of form and function, fantasy and reality, body and mind.
So why not go out and buy a magazine, or at least page through The Sartorialist for a bit? You'll like it, I promise.
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