{ Carmel, California }
Zara Button-Down (similar) and Scarf (similar) | DKNY Sneakers | Extremely Old Leggings (similar)
Zac Posen Bag c/o | Tom Ford Sunglasses (sold out everywhere, but I found the hardest-to-find color – which is also my favorite – on consignment here)
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Here is how I know I have officially acclimated to California – to the point where I, a lifelong New Yorker, would now actually call myself A Californian (eep):
I freak out when it’s 55 degrees outside and immediately need to swath myself in blankets.
Seriously, when I put a little perspective into this situation – perspective like, “last year at this time I was dodging wayward FedEx trucks on an icy freeway and shoveling my babysitter’s car out of three-foot-tall snow piles” – I realize it’s ludicrous. But every day lately, when I drop my son off at school, I find myself having little small-talk conversations with the other parents during which I say things like, “Goodness, isn’t it freezing out today?!” (It’s not. It’s, like, maybe mildly chilly.)
Don’t even get me started on how people here react when the sky decides to squeeze out six or seven raindrops. A half-hour sun shower is apparently cause for city-wide flood warnings and power outages and panic.
The other day we went to Carmel, and I wore what I wear when I’m feeling obscenely lazy but still want to look like a semi-human being – an oversize button-down, cropped leggings that are from 1992 and that I still wear multiple times a week because GOD they are comfortable, and something cute-ish in the way of shoes and a bag. And then I stepped out of the car, felt the frigid wind whipping around me (I think my former self would have called this “a light breeze”), and wrapped myself up in a blanket scarf (which, if you’re not aware, is called that because it is the size and weight of an actual blanket as opposed to something you would more commonly expect to see wrapped around a person’s neck). Then I dug my furry vintage denim jacket out of the trunk and put it on top (I removed the jacket for these photos because the effect was sort of Stay-Puft-marshmallow-man on the top and summertiiiiiime on the bottom, and it looked ridiculous), and I wandered around all day bundled up like a little papoose, and felt GREAT.
Winter weather that can be warded off with the addition of what amounts to a jean jacket and lets you simultaneously have bare legs is my kind of winter weather.
So: I’m calling myself Californian.
Officially.
