are you kidding?While at a local amazing cafe I pondered a thought that had surfaced recently from a friend. Is Boston a fashionable city? Both the locals and Sam Adams brewery tourists, dressed for the heat and humidity of the afternoon, easily answered this question for me: no.
But then, what does "fashionable" even mean?
After inhabiting this city for a few years, I can deduce that the trends in personal style reflect the extreme weather patterns of this walkable city. Either people wear hardly anything in summer, perhaps a glorified t-shirt and flip flops, or else they are bundled so tightly that it's nearly impossible to define the age, gender or even existence of a human beneath so many layers of down and PolarFleece. That is, folks who live here dress to fit an environment or local paradigm, not what Condé Nast dictates.
What about personal style?
The common stereotypes of fashion in other cities can be described easily: New Yorkers wear lots of black, women in L.A. dress in jeans with high heels while exiting their SUVs for a stop at PinkBerry, everyone in Chicago wears sweatshirts in support of "da Bears" during football season. But what about Boston? Despite the efforts of such glossy publications such as Boston Common to play up the elite Brahmin that resides in each of us, few people give in to the forces of fashion. In a city where transportation is largely on foot, most people can't be bothered with high stillettos or volumnous trenchcoats. We prefer instead to marvel at each new season as art, then take hints about what to wear in Manhattan and return to our Red Sox tees and Celtics jerseys.
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