I touched on this a bit in my post about rag & bone’s show, but I played hookie from fashion week this time! My blog is about my life and inspirations in Chicago, it’s not about all the celebustylists and mega-editors at fashion week. I go to New York Fashion Week to have fun. There are plenty of blogs that cover them, and much better than I ever could. And runway shows? You’re better off checking Style.com, unless you want my personal take on them, which is cool. I’m not pretending to do reportage. I’m a girl with a blog. After shooting street-style outside fashion shows at every fashion week since February 2011, the experiences frankly left me with a bad taste in my mouth. There’s nothing worse than feeling like paparazzi when really, you’re just so blissfully inspired by the beautifully dressed creatures dashing across Manhattan that you want to capture the sublime moments. If I’m stressed out or getting pushed to the ground by aggressive photographers (it’s happened three times), then really, what’s the point if I’m not having fun?!

I already wrote about my Thursday adventure, now it’s time for Sunday. I started off the day with plans to visit the American Museum of Natural History with my cousin Kip, who lives in the city and interns at the museum. I absolutely love that when I travel to New York fashion week, I get to stay with my aunt Lisa and cousins in Morningside Park. In a way, it feels like I’m coming home. There’s nothing better than kicking off my shoes after a long day of street-style hunting and eating a home-cooked meal. Kip and I saw a planetarium show about the history of the universe, wandered around an exhibit on bio-luminescence (which was apropos considering a shot street-style outside of Alexander Wang’s glow-in-the-dark bonanza) and marveled at pieces of Mayan temples brought from Mexico.

My old neighborhood

Several hours later, my partner-in-crime (and newly minted New Yorker) Rhianna met up with me at 81st and Central Park, we took the subway down to Greenwich Village. It’s become something of a pilgrimage site for me to go see my old apartment building. Mentally I know it’s not healthy to play the “what-if” game, but I can’t help but wonder what my life had been like if my family stayed in New York. Growing up in Arkansas, it felt like life was playing a cruel joke on me. Bright city lights, the energy of urban life, and gritty industrial sprawl are things I’ve always felt myself drawn to. It’s as though I had an intellectual romance with the idea of city life. Part of me wonders if it’s precisely because I was removed from the city at an old enough age to understand what I was missing that I became so enamored with city life. Kind of like unrequited love, only better because I finally fell into the arms of an even better lover, Chicago! Ok ok, I’ve taken this analogy too far (as I often do hehe) but you get the picture. I LOVE CITIES!

Later that afternoon, Rhianna took me to a fashion gem nestled on a tree-lined street in the East Village named Tokio7. I’ve never been to a consignment store that had Rodarte, Suno, Balmain, oodles of Alexander Wang and Helmut Lang, plus stage costumes worn by Lady Gaga herself. I may or may not have walked out with my own personal holy grail, a woven sweater by Rodarte from their Fall 2008 collection. Magic happens when you least expect it, since it was 1/10 of the price it must have originally retailed for. Thrifting and vintage my friends, it’s all about the thrifting and the vintage! We hit up a few more consignment shops, and I walked out with a fierce pair of black metallic Siwy snakeskin print pants and a J.Crew cashmere sweater.

We made our way to the Subway and sped across the East river to Brooklyn, where I thrifted the most incredible pair of daisy print heels. They’re a bit unwalkable and wearing them feels like standing en pointe, but that’s the price we pay for fashion I suppose. I ended up wearing these to my Nicole Richie party a few days later at Macy’s, which is exactly what I had them in mind for when I bought them. I was a bit burned out, and tired, so Rhianna took me to the East River State Park. Marvelous doesn’t even begin to describe the view of Manhattan from Brooklyn. We sat and talked about life in a totally predictable move, as though all of Sunday had been my own personal ‘coming of age’ movie. Only this was REAL LIFE.

Playing hookie from New York Fashion Week on Sunday recharged my batteries in a deeply personal way. It’s difficult to articulate, but the act of freeing myself from my own expectations about this blog and my identity as a street-style photographer allowed me to once again see running this blog as a CHOICE I make, not an obligation. Sometimes all we need to do is let something go, before it flies back into our arms a thousand times enriched.

Editor’s Note: This post went up prematurely on Monday, I meant to save it as a draft. Now it’s complete!