painfully hip

The winter I spent in New York city, I marveled at the obstinacy of young women, who wore, regardless of temperature, precipitation or widespread grime, incredibly high heels and terribly white coats. Of course, black was the predominant color on the streets all winter, but the truly fashionable identified themselves by the height of their heels and the luminance of their dress.

Here, too, women stake their claim to fashion with stilettos, knee-high boots atop four-inch heels, and luminous, fur-trimmed coats. Of course, there is a lot of black here, too, and every variety of quilted down-wear. But what surprises me, as I tromp about in some old, lug-soled boots that, luckily, no one bought at our garage sale last summer, is women's footwear. Every other day, as snow piles up and melts away, the streets fill with marshes of dirty slush. The streets are cobbled, so hidden beneath these marshes is an uneven, ankle-breaking surface. But I seem to be the only one having trouble.

The truly fashionable squeeze into extremely tight jeans or breathtakingly short skirts; a look that blends something of Paris Hilton and Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman" (and not to be mistaken with the look on US campuses: Brittney Spears and Lil' Kim). More women wear heels here than not, regardless of age. Skirts and shorts go with boots, just as easily as jeans.

Yet, while in the US, where the streets are a hodge-podge of thrown together outfits, an entire continent of varicolored tee shirts and monocolored jeans and more often than not the question that springs to mind is: Did you look in a mirror before you left the house?, here, everyone on the street is put together. No accidents and no indifference: what you see are outfits, intentional arrangements, considered actions.