Notes on Style and Fashion

Free People, $148, piperlime.com

In DC today, it is rainy and cold and gray. A chilly 45-degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact. In Paris, it is 13-degrees Celsius with a light drizzle.  With this much precipitation in the air, it is only right and fair to turn the eye towards outerwear. If you are like me, one who does not like when the temperature dips below 75-degrees Fahrenheit (or 24–degrees Celsius), then right about now you are looking for coats and jackets and gloves to wear to keep the body warm.

Rainy weather always makes me think first of Paris, more than any other city in the world. Yes, even before Seattle. When thoughts of travel to Paris come to mind, I don’t think summer in Paris, but rather Fall or Winter, sometimes even Spring, in Paris. The association with cool (weather) and Paris works for me because S/S Paris Fashion Week consistently occurs in October. And while it makes sense to explore a city when the weather is less frightful, I can only think of being a flâneuse, that quintessential lolly-gagger who, with umbrella in hand, strolls an arrondissement, stopping before glass windows of shops displaying their wares, enticing one to come and have just one of that thing.

Making one’s way around a wet and rainy Paris as the ever-thoughtful flâneuse then leads to thoughts about jackets and other types of outerwear, which leads me to the topic of today’s post: what to wear on those cool, sometimes downright chilly, days and nights.