When it rains in Los Angeles, I’m one of the few who takes joy in the cooler temperatures. Not only because we get a break from our standard sunny atmosphere but also because colder temperatures make for some great sartorial moments: layers upon layers of fashionable clothing and accessories! I recently made the journey to New York City for fashion week and experiencing an East Coast winter in the dead of February has changed my perception of the word "cold." As I said before I’ve been a long fan of layers for LA winters but my Angeleno layers did not prepare me for the arctic tundra that I was about to endure.
I arrived at JFK on a Thursday evening in some joggers, a sweatshirt, sneakers and a beanie. I would of course have to walk outside to hail a cab to my destination, but the brat inside me thought my outfit provided enough warmth while still maintaining a cool fashion factor. YEAH RIGHT! I took one step outside and ran back in to open my suitcase on the floor of the terminal to pull out a pea coat, scarf, gloves and an extra pair of socks. Once I had my winter armor in place I went back outside and thankfully the taxi queue wasn’t long, so it was only a minute before I was basking in the cab's heater.
When I got to my friend’s apartment in Brooklyn, the dreamy thought of a winter wonderland quickly vanished when my eyes met a dark, blackish slush piled up on the sidewalk and street corner of every block for miles. Thankfully, two days later I was outside in the middle of fresh snowfall. By this time I was still bitching about the low temperatures, the little kid inside of me was excited to finally see some Frozen worthy snow action. For the remaining of that Saturday as I window shopped the stores aplenty in Soho, I paraded up and down the streets singing “Do you want to build a snowman?”
Towards the end of my trip, I invented a game that I decided to call “Should I brave the freezing cold and go to my nighttime shows or ditch them and order food from Seamless and put on a pair of sweats instead?” I think you can figure out for yourself which option was the consistent winner...
New York, I love you, but to the people who deal with that cold on a regular basis...what are you doing with your lives? It’s time to get out and inhabit Los Angeles…where our weather truly spoils us and our definition of winter is low-to-mid sixties!