On loving fashion.

Seattle is ranked high on the list of America’s worst-dressed cities. Right up there with Boulder, Cleveland, and Raleigh, North Carolina. And I work at Microsoft, where, lest you think the lack of fashion sense in an already fashionless place couldn’t be worse, it is. Regardless, last weekend was all about fashion for me. I watched two documentaries on the topic: Fresh Dressed, at the ByDesign Film Festival at Northwest Film Forum, and Advanced Style via Vimeo, at home on my laptop.

By thumbing her nose at the haute couture styles of the 19th century, Coco Chanel freed women from the suffocating clutches of corsets and bustles and created a fashion revolution that would influence every designer that came after her. 31, Rue Cambon, in The New Yorker.

Fashion, I think, is a beautiful thing, and I won’t apologize for liking it. I won’t apologize for having too many shoes and skirts and pants and sweaters and coats and scarves. I won’t feel guilty for my white Prada eyeglasses or my robin’s egg blue Kate Spade handbag or for the “Buy something from Bottega Veneta!” item on my bucket list. I won’t be ashamed to tell you that I am 40-something with a girl crush on Tavi Gevinson. I will never apologize because fashion is smart. Fashion is fun. Fashion is art hung on the canvas of our bodies; it is the palette of the urban tableau.

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with the ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” ― Coco Chanel