my style

I Am an Important Fashion Lady and Therefore I Refuse to Wear This Jacket Like a Normal Person

Coats.
Coats. Photo: Youngjun Koo

I’m sure you could tell by the way I am wearing my coat as if it were a cape, but I am an important fashion lady. I must ask that you respect me. I refuse to put my arms through the sleeves of this coat I am wearing because, as you must understand by now, important fashion ladies are above this pedestrian task. Please, keep a distance. I have important fashion events to attend!

Perhaps it will surprise you to learn that people often stop me on the street to photograph me. Do you know who these people are? They are called street-style photographers. Who photographs you when you are walking down the street? Your mom? Ha! I bet. Where are your jeans from? You don’t even know? Please, out of my face before I have to gesture politely and very carefully from beneath the confines of my coat. Wearing my coat like this does not give me a wide range of motion, it’s true; but that won’t stop me from flapping my arms forward like a dog paddling out of water. I might even set aside my enormous fashion clutch (bright-orange leather) to do so. No more of this chatter! Shoo, plebe!

Any outfit I wear, no matter the season or designer, is accompanied by a coat or jacket (or blazer or trench), and never once have I known what it might be like to stuff my arm through an outerwear fabric tube. Do you know the expression “I put my pants on one leg at a time, like everyone else”? Sometimes I like to say, “I do not put my coat on one sleeve at a time like everyone else.” This is to make sure everyone knows that I am fashionable. I am an important fashion lady, and you will know me by my purely ornamental sleeves. I will persist in modeling this style just as I have for years now because this look, unlike other fashions such as cigarette wash jeans (?) and sticks of shoe dynamite (??), is impervious to the changing trends.

Are there times when my fashion look — coat over shoulders, no sleeves, never sleeves — is an impediment to my productivity? A nuisance to my busy life as a lady who, as you can tell, is constantly out and about, attending events and “meeting Anna Wintour” and mumbling Céline something-something Milan Fashion Week? Do you think that a coat draped this way makes it hard for me to shake hands, write notes, give hugs, eat spaghetti, drive a car? Sure. I’ve had my bad days. We all have. But do you think wearing my coat the way you wear your coat — arms in sleeves, maybe even zipped up — would get me into the door of all of the Big Fashion Events like that one and also that other one? No. That is why you are outside. And I float happily through the door of whatever fashion event I may choose.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see Kanye over there, and I must begin to walk very slowly in his direction. It’s a windy day, after all. I would not want to lose my coat, which is literally draped upon me like a towel. Toodle-oo.

Photo: Youngjun Koo
I Refuse to Wear My Coat Like a Normal Person