Outside My Comfort Zone

The Fall/Winter ‘11 Isabel Marant “Navajo” collection was made for the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite:  Alpaca sweaters dripping with feathers, trapper jackets with huge fur collars and jeans jammed with western patchwork.  Perhaps it was the “Manly” fringe boots from said collection purchased by JSlow during our last LWL that subliminally pointed me down miles of train tracks and dirt roads up to the Sierras this week.

But still, for someone who has never fully appreciated nature, or anything having to do with the outdoors, deciding to spend my cough/throat-clear/ahem/cough cough cough/deep sigh/50^th/cough cough/inhale/exhale birthday at Yosemite was ridiculous.

And yet, this is where I celebrated, quietly and roughly 4 hours away from the nearest Barney’s or other purveyors of fantastic forward fashions.  Even online outlets were off-limits as the hotel wi-fi was down.

I’m not sure if being completely cut-off from fashion civilization contributed to my birthday blues, but it sure didn’t help.

I was surrounded by trees and rocks and flocks of families in fanny packs and parkas.  I was an outsider.  I was an outsider in the outdoors.  I was out of my element on my birthday.

Undeterred, I put on my birthday outfit, selected for the rustic motif befitting the  Ahwahnee:  Isabel Marant dress, wooly Tom Scott sweater, A Detacher fringed belt, and‘90s Clone Pony-fur pumps (pretty spectacular, no?)

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

If I wear a fabulous outfit on my birthday and no one is around to see it, does it really exist?

In the 7 hours it took my husband and I to get to Yosemite, which included all manner of public transit (a cab to the SF Ferry Building, a bus from the Ferry Building to the Emeryville Amtrak station, an Amtrak train from Emeryville to Merced and another bus from Merced to Yosemite), we could have flown to New York and I could be rifling through the sale racks at Bergdorf’s.  Inside.  In my element.

Next year.

And next year, I look forward to collections that speak to my inner inside girl, more Haider Ackermann and Gareth Pugh, and dare I say, less Isabel Marant.