What people are wearing below freezing point in New York

Part poem, part photo essay, part street style report, with 5 high-winter looks from me packed in too.

There’s something about a beanie and a scarf that can make an assembly of clothes worn purely for function look like they’re an intentional style choice. You add a pair of sunglasses and an entire personality emerges.

Are you ready for a parade of beanies? Versace, Versace, Versace, and this is great too.

Toteme’s red is here. Like something blue in its place, with a red coat or scarf too. This from Jil Sander is so tender too

Leopard beanie plaid scarf combo made me smile. I’ll suggest a fair isle (see also) with something striped. I’ll drop in this lurex number for good measure.

Speaking of! Ely Ely hat with Eldon Portobello scarf and a Prada shearling jacket from Fall 2004; here are the navy flares you should get. They’re from Spanx. Have them in black and they rock — wear them to the gym, wear them to work. Got that white button down too, great curving.

New York has been cold.

Like sidewalks frozen, pipes freeze-bursting in buildings, no hot water for days cold. It hasn’t felt like this since I was a kid, at least not for such a sustained period of time, but for a change, I have to tell you, I don’t mind it. I think the hardest part about winter is how much some of us (me included) have tried to resist it.

Because it’s like, what are you supposed to embrace? The layers of pants under your pants, the way you can’t bend your elbows through your shirt/sweater/sweater/coat or how your chest tenses up as you huddle over every time you step outside? Stay slouched over like that long enough and there is no question your heart closes up.

But there is also something comforting about developing a routine around an undesirable circumstance (like freezing weather) that reminds me of what my dad used to say when I’d get upset for this or that reason and ask him, “Am I going to be okay?” He’d say, “Of course you’ll be okay, you just have to adjust.”

I hated it back then but can appreciate now that what he meant was not that I should settle — make myself comfortable sitting in shit — but that it’s better if I accept reality for what it is. Because if I do, I could more quickly find a way to find myself, and to find beauty in that new reality too.

A durable pair of cowboy boots are surprisingly great in this weather. And here’s the only coat in the world

A gorgeous man with perfect skin in studio light

So as far as the winter goes, I’m adjusting. Have adjusted. Made peace with the workout that is getting dressed, layer 1 over 2 over 3 over 4, and that’s not yet counting hat gloves scarf and glasses to leave the house in the morning.

Other notes: red leather gloves, Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses (this alt is 10% of the price), Prada boots (these from Tecovas are the alt)

Polo leopard coat (very sold out), but I might suggest something like this or like this in its place; with a scarf that is kind of like this; and Salewa hiking shoes. If they could get me 2000 feet up a trail in Telluride, surely they could handle some snow.

Lila Schaefer beanie with a House of Dagmar reversible coat, Aflalo pants and Wales Bonner boots (these feel like a cross btwn the pictured and these from Prada)

And-daugther scarf, L.L. Bean tote

A great alt to the pictured ribbed cashmere bucket hat from Loro Piana is this hat or this hat from Soeur sub $100, but I do also think she’s been a seasonal sleeper if you want to get on it. Wearing jeans, but more often I’m in these or these.

We got the same memo

And you know what? I really have found beauty here. That first hit of fresh air when I walk out the door and take a deep breath and feel the cold roll down my nostrils and through my lungs is more energizing than a shot of espresso.

And when the sun hits the sidewalk still hovering low as if trying to make eye contact with me — and light bounces off the snow, now assembled in lines of short ice mountains huddled up to the parked cars on either side of each street, I could swear I’m on set in studio light.

Andrea Vientec crochet hat with Blenders sunglasses, a scarf/shawl from Yaser Shaw and my own cuffs and earrings

I would love her as hat here too. The coat is By Malene Birger, jeans are Aflalo’s ‘Leary’ and in place of these from Bottega are these from Paris Texas or these from Re/done

The necklaces are from Year of the Flood and Jujuvera

The vibe is fashion shaman in the mountains

And at home, or more specifically, in the kitchen? Forget it.

All the time indoors has created spaciousness, the kind that breeds creative confidence. I’ve been going off script left and right — testing mushroom broths here (mine is almost perfect, just needs a little more ginger and one more clove of garlic next time) and tangy meatball soup there. I’ve been squeezing preserved lemon into everything, and stuffing all kinds of vegetables with minced meat or beans.

Cooking may be the antidote to feeling cooped up but tbh, it’s the time I get with a simple pleasure, like sucking an orange slice down to its rind over the sink while I wait for water to boil where I feel most intoxicated with joy because I remember that even when nature seems so far, there it is, nourishing me with what fruit it still bears in season.

For many, the hood is the selling point.

Moncler x Jil Sander red puffer here, Aritzia red puffer here

Ah, season.

Winter is the season of imagination.

If we spend spring and summer planting our seeds then watching them bloom, and if fall is the harvest that yields our living, then now — in the winter — is when we dream up what fiber will make up the seeds that carry us through the rest of it. That will occupy our minds and our muscles until next year when we are back here.

That’s what you get when you embrace winter, when you don’t try to resist its sleepy, frosty stillness: enough quiet to touch into truth, to dream up what big life you have yet to live, might decide you’re ready to live.

I love the dreaming phase. It’s hazy and romantic. Not yet rooted, it floats, so I go up to meet it. There we dance in the abyss, and as spring gets nearer, I wonder: will I bring you down with me?

Only so many dreams can come down at once.

TWP hooded anorak (see here to button all the way down) styled over a blue button down with Aflalo surf pants, Calvin Klein’s enduring black collarless coat

The bucket hat is from Cordera (think it’s gone, this or this is sim). Here’s one good pair of riding boots (Paris Texas), here is another (Massimo Dutti); a straight shaft is what you’re after to get this look right

In the season of imagination, fashion clothes often feel like a fantasy fiction, locked in a closet armed for a life that used to exist but now hangs like a relic. In truth the clothes hibernate. Giving us a rest too so there’s broader terrain to stretch out and dream those dreams big.

In these days it’s function first,

second,

third,

maybe even fourth,

no need to change pants, or sweater layer 3, but make no mistake, style still finds a way.

Because we adjust. Our lenses change.

Fur hat (x 2), turquoise scarf

Red knit hood

An amalgam of both, not even on purpose! With Carelli’s faux fur jacket (and Comme Si gloves (they come short too) + our Greek Key ring)

The scarf matches the socks, the scrunched jeans now look cool. The dog matches her owner, the dog looks damn great!, and that guy’s ski jacket wins piece of the year.

It might feel more comfortable to crouch over and close, but there’s a magic to winter if you’ll open to it.

Be warm,

Leandra