After several rounds of edits, I headed out shopping last Saturday with a list.

Shopping with a list for someone else is very different from shopping for myself. Having a list didn’t make me less observant; it actually made me see more. It’s really hard to shop with blinders on in my line of work, but due to time constraints, I did my best to stay focused. But once I found what I was looking for? Baby, my eyes were free to notice evvvverything else. Suprisingly, it ended up being one of the most efficient shopping days I’ve had, including a few completely unexpected purchases for myself.

I wasn’t looking for things to fill a wardrobe gap or asking, Does this come in my size? Do I need it? I started asking different questions… Why is this color everywhere? Why is this fabric everywhere? And why can’t I find something as simple as a black skirt?? What details am I drawn to? What fabric hands or drapes am I responding to? Etc., etc., etc.

The client had a budget, and selected my suggestions from Aritzia, Banana Republic, COS, Madewell, Frame, Paige, Untuckit, Express, and & Other Stories. Basically the span of a main drag in SoHo. These are stores I know well online but rarely walk through in person. (When styling shoots or people, I shop stores in close proximity to one another or a department store so returns don’t drag me through the mud).

When I got home, I remembered the feelings I had comp shopping or pulling samples for design presentations at Ann Taylor & Macys:

With clear intentions, you immediately see what’s missing from the retail floor and what’s being pushed repeatedly. Walking into a well curated/staffed/stocked store feels like being my favorite restauarnt. I always compliment the merchant the same way I’d compliment the chef because when I can immediately feel the energy of a season, or the POV of the brand it makes it so much easier to make sound decisions. At the end of the day, shoppings best reward, is not just the hunt, but also the utility.

My first challenge was finding a simple black midi skirt for the shoot. It sounded easy, but it wasn’t. Stores right now feel like a mix of sale merchandise, early fall deliveries, and leftover summer product. It’s kind of a mess. Finding one well-designed, quiet yet interesting skirt within budget never happened.

The men’s departments, on the other hand, suprised me.

I found an olive jumpsuit, one of those boiler suit styles that had us all in a chokehold around 2018. It caught my attention because it felt vintage. It was masc and fem, and it felt incredibly well made. It wasn’t on my shopping list, and it certainly wasn’t for the shoot, but seeing that silhouette reminded me how much I want a jumpsuit back in my own wardrobe. (I hate seeing things I used to own and have sold or donated…this is why we need to be so careful in curating and culling our closets).

Then I noticed an oversized pleat-front olive pant that immediately reminded me of Tibi’s Stella silhouette. My brain started moving. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about that pant anymore. I was imagining one in olive cotton twill. Then my mind skipped to texture. What if it were made in a deep-wale silk corduroy? Think retail ADHD meets Supermarket Sweep. I swear to you, my creative brain doesn’t sleep.

For a brief moment, I wanted to design again, because I need need need a pair of full corduroy pants in my size. Don’t worry, I’m not ready yet, but when I do, you will know.

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Sometimes seeing a great piece doesn’t make you want that piece. It makes you realize what’s missing in the market and your closet.

Still in the men’s department, I noticed a pair of mint shorts. The pockets reminded me of Tibi’s nylon skirt. I wasn’t shopping for men’s shorts, and honestly I wasn’t even shopping for mint. I was responding to the utility details. They were thoughtful enough to make me stop and wonder whether this was something worth trying at a much lower price point.

I walked into COS thinking I was looking for pants or that damn black skirt. What I was actually responding to was texture. A shaggy knit made me realize how much much depth sweaters with a lot of texture will add to my closet for fall.

Then came a clean denim shirt. I do NOT need another denim shirt. But I came across one with with the right wash, the right proportions, and almost no unnecessary design details. Nearly every store had its own version. You could almost see the shared design brief playing out across all of SoHo.

One of the only things I actually bought for myself was a jersey from Aritzia…

I didn’t plan on wearing it this summer, but couldn’t wait. While the number on the front means nothing to me, I may stencil in a small 81 below the 18 to represent the year my Alma matter was founded just have it feel more personal. I didn’t buy this for it to have personal meaning, I was buying into the idea and trend of sport, but at a price low enough to have fun with for a season without feeling like it was major investment. I’d been targeted with an Acne Studios version before, and just couldn’t justify the price point, even though the Fear of God jersey #44 I saw Michelle Obama wearing could make me break the piggy bank.

And this jacket (above). The Banana Republic in SoHo carries vintage items from the brand - they have to be 20-30 years old to be considered for the rail. I found a jean jacket that blew my mind. I took a pic, thinking, “What a find, tell folks to come and get it,” and didn’t find out it was a one of a kind piece until soon after.

By the end of the day, I realized I hadn’t spent hours thinking about brands.

I was thinking about texture. Utility. Proportion. Color. Details.

The shopping list got me into the stores, but paying attention was what made the day feel productive. I came home with a few things, but more importantly, I came home with a clearer understanding of what I’m actually looking for.

Sometimes the best thing you bring home isn’t what you added to cart, but leaving with a better understanding of self.

On Repeat:

Low Key Important — 001
The soundtrack to “What I Saw > What I Bought.”

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Today* was the Knicks championship parade in New York City.

I’ve been a resident here since the summer of 2011, but my first real experience living and working in New York as an adult happened in 2007. I was working at a co-op for Tracy Reese, staying with my mother’s family in Harlem. I got up, took the train, and experienced what it felt like to live, breathe, work, and thrive in New York. So here we are, 19 years later, now 2026. Nineteen years feel like forever ago, but in comparison to how long the city, the Knicks franchise, and of course its most loyal fan Spike Lee have been waiting for this, 53 years of waiting for a championship makes my timeline feel like child’s play.

My mother visited last weekend to help us celebrate my daughter’s birthday. Before she arrived, all of her friends told her not to wear black to the city. They said anybody wearing black would be assumed to be a Spurs fan, and they were “beating up Spurs fans.” She’s not completely wrong in her anxiety…but not exactly right either. She listened to them. I picked her up from the train and it looked like she was bound for a Hawaiian vacation instead of an urban upstate adventure. Because of her fear (and what I believe to also be excitement), she wore different colors, colors that were exciting, energizing, and as close as humanly possible to the colors of the New York Knicks.

I laughed so damn hard when she told me this. Mostly because my mother is (a former) New Yorker. I say former lightly, because once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker. She was born and raised in Harlem, and I grew up hearing her telling stories about walking and daydreaming along the aspirational and historic Strivers Row. She’s one of the strongest people I know..petite in stature but tough. Tough in a way that put the fear of God in me as a kid. And yet here she was, afraid that wearing black in New York could get her hurt. BLACK. IN NEW YORK. THE CITY THAT TREATS BLACK AS ITS UNIFORM. That somebody might mess with her because of a color…

And so on the morning of the parade, as early as 6:30 AM, I saw blue and orange everywhere. No black in sight. For weeks now, 75% of the people I passed were wearing some combination of orange and blue. I started documenting. Taking quick snaps of shades and combos, demographics and nuances. It got me thinking.

For many, it feels unnatural to combine orange and blue. Unless you’re rooting for a sports team, high school, college, or professional, you’re likely not combining them one blocked atop the other. It can be done, and some do and the result is a feeling that is a bold, creative and vibrant expression of their personality. But in a way that prevents it from giving mascot or toddler energy. I like wearing it with 95% of one color and an accent of 5% of the other which often feels modern and new. My favorite pairing is to use subdued tones like navy with burnt orange or sienna. Regardless of the history and apprehension, everyone in NYC found a way to combine these colors in a way that was special to them.

I saw someone wearing a long-sleeve striped shirt with sweatpants. There was something really sophisticated about that. The way the colors worked together felt intentional, elevated.

I saw someone wearing a coral pant with a blue shirt. I saw people wearing different shades of turquoise paired back with different shades of orange, playing with the spectrum of both colors. And then you add in the logos, the Knicks merchandise, the cultural weight of it all. Even the mayor’s wife wore a custom piece that looked like jerseys pieced together, showing that even the most official New York was finding a way to style these colors as something more than just a team uniform. It was couture. I mean, after all, it’s New York. One of the original fashion capitals of the world.

I even saw the “First Lady of the Knicks Parade” so excited she climbed the light pole in orange underwear, she took extra care to represent even down to the piece she likely didn’t think anyone else would see or even care about.

My mom reminded me that New Yorkers aren’t really just fans of the Knicks. Not all of them. Some are, sure. But New Yorkers are fans of New York. They’re fans of the idea of New York. The grit of New York. The way it weeds out those who can and can’t handle the heat. So when their team wins a championship after fifty-three years of loss, it becomes an excuse to express something bigger. It becomes a way to say: I belong here. I’m a part of this. The struggle and the triumph.

While most places aim to make life easier and maybe a little more fun, New York’s promise is the opposite, it is expensive and hard as hell to acclimate at first, but success of doing so proves personal grit. Surviving in New York is positioned as a rite of passage, where enduring hardship becomes a measure of identity and personal evolution.

So pairing colors together that don’t normally feel natural is nothing in comparison to the collective identity of it.

The colors became a code. A way to move through the city and be recognized as part of something bigger. A hunger. A thirst. A survival. A triumph over adversities. The comeback after a 29-point lead kind of adversity.

And maybe that’s what New York always does. It takes something and makes it their own. When Biggie Smalls said “Coogie down to the socks,” he meant that he left no detail unturned in his ability to be freshest and best dressed. I’ve dated, hung out with and spent time with my NY family to know just how much coordination matters in NYC culture - specifically in hip hop. Dressing head-to-toe intentionally is an act of collective identity and respect. Currently avail to watch here.

Knicks down to the socks (or panties) is just that. New York being New York. Every person from every income level, industry, and borough takes a feeling that’s collective and finds a way for it to feel deeply personal.

Challenge cultivates creativity and community, and so does color. That’s what I saw during this championship and celebration. It’s what my mother was afraid of, and what she ended up celebrating.

That’s on orange & blue in Spike Lee’s New York. My New York. Everyone’s New York.

Here are few combinations of Orange and Blue I quite enjoy:

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As children, we’re taught color through a base of three crayons…red, yellow, blue, or a marker pack of ten, inclusive of black and brown. Slowly we learn that red, yellow, and blue are our primary colors, and that when mixed together, they bring you something new.

My daughter and I work through this daily whenever one of her crayons is missing and she’s looking for a color we don’t have. Together we create pink by mixing white and red acrylic paint, or purple with a red colored pencil blended over blue. Within minutes, I’ve introduced her to not only tertiary colors, but a spirit of resourcefulness that I can only hope pours into other areas of her life that may require her to use it more.

In design school, one of our required foundation courses was Color Theory. At the time, it really pissed me off that a course so basic would be required to move onto the next phase of my graduate education. Seriously, why on earth am I enrolled (during the summer, at that) taking a three-credit course on something that seems so obvious? I’m here to learn how to design clothes, build a portfolio, and get a job. The sooner I can graduate and work for some fancy fashion brand, I’ll be better for it. This pit stop really feels like a waste of my time and financial aid money…

But ah…did I eat my words. Of all the classes I took that summer, color theory was the most tedious. Multiple trips back and forth to Blick (the one in South Philly to be exact). The syllabus called for grayscale first, and a material list including tubes of cerulean blue, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, and big canisters of white and black paint.

Today, class, we will be painting a grayscale. Start with black. Add a little white. Then a little more. Then a little more. Keep going until you arrive at white.

The goal wasn’t simply to create shades of gray. It was to understand value, proportion, and relationship. Every new shade existed because of the one before it. Too much white and you’d skip over a value entirely. Too little and nothing changed. We did it over and over again until the percentages were just right.

What I didn’t know then was that I was learning something that had very little to do with paint. I was learning how to see. Difference. Contrast. Relationship. The way one thing changes because of what sits beside it.

While this did inform how I selected fabrics or built color palettes on presentation boards, nobody connected the theory to the feeling. No one really leaned in to whisper: “Ahhhh, now this is how you design and teach people how to not only buy your clothing but how to use it when getting dressed.”

Color as a feeling isn’t new to me or those of you who use therapeutic methods for healing not only mental-related health issues but also physical pain.

The use of x combination to make you feel calm or y color to make you feel powerful…or approachable…or interesting. This lesson in itself is a masterclass in self-expression and is worth its weight in gold.

And after seventeen years in fashion, styling hundreds of women, and standing in front of closets full of beautiful clothes their owners were afraid to wear, I’ve realized something. People don’t have an aversion to color, they don’t have a system to connect it to how they feel.

When a woman tells me she doesn’t know how to wear color, or that she doesn’t like it, what she’s often saying is that she doesn’t trust herself that it will depict her in the right light. Or maybe she has mental blocks surrounding the meaning of color or was told that this is how that color will make her feel. When we can’t seem to make a color work, we likely haven’t found the right combinations of color to make it feel like our own.

So we reach for what feels safe. The same colors. The same combinations. The same pieces that technically work but never quite say what we mean. Or more importantly, what we feel and want to convey. And each time we reach into our closet, if a color falls within the same color system as our norm, the outcome will also be the same.

For example, when I get dressed in the morning and find my outfit falling flat or not working, I can’t simply reach in and get just another item. I reach in and pick a color from another category. If white didn’t work on top, reaching for that same color no matter the fabrication will likely give me a similar feeling. Not the same, but similar. Reaching for an unexpected color…in-between, muddy, or not quite (blue, navy, turquoise) will give me a different feeling. A different depth. A different level of interest.

My rationale here is that I need color to say what I mean it to. And for it to mean what I intend for it to say.

And combining the color will not only act as the movie, but also the script and the soundtrack to just how energetic or relaxed, soft and delicate or strong and confident I want it to feel.

As a reformed robot from fashion’s corporate America, I can tell you: the most underutilized, under-the-radar but most interesting and useful category is the unexpected color. The one that adds depth.

As a designer, I had to work with a merchandising counterpart on all things before taking our prototype samples into the fitting room. The one thing they would push back on was color. Colors had to be saleable, non-complicated, and easy to replicate as a best seller year after year.

There was no way in hell they would let us design a color that was two shades lighter or darker than the one before it just to give the customer something “interesting to wear.” Doing this would’ve split sales. The customer buying black will never buy into the same pant in a deep dark shade of grey. She has that covered, they would say, proceeding to select the next neutral color on the Pantone TCX color wheel.

But here we are. It’s a new day, a new dawn, and I’m feeling good…

So let me tell you about my favorite color category. The one nobody talks about enough…DEPTH. Depth is something we lack in the closet that we don’t really realize until we tap in. The colors that add range.

Depth colors add range, interest, complexity, and unexpectedness. They make everything around them better. They’re the reason an outfit goes from fine to “wait, what are you wearing?” without a single bright or exciting color in sight.

And here’s the thing nobody told you: those colors that feel hard to name are a feature, not an issue or point of concern. The fact that they sit between categories is exactly what makes them work.

Start there. Pull out something unexpected or ishy from your closet. Build around it. Or let it stand alone.

Next week I’ll introduce you to new color combinations. So you can start combining them intentionally, and why those combinations create completely different feelings depending on what you pair.

Color is how you show up before you say a word. It’s the one decision that could save you money in the long run by giving yourself more options. More ways to fill a gap in the closet rather than replicating a feeling you’ve been trying to avoid.

And once you have a system for color, you’ll stop asking the women that do your colors if it’s okay. You’ll know that yes, you can wear that shade of yellow, but maybe only when it’s on the bottom, or as an accessory, or in a combination that reflects your type of fun.

When you know, you know. And knowing is really half of the battle. (And half the cost.)

I must know: What is your favorite in-between color? What’s one that you completely avoid? I love hearing your problems because I will likely have a solution, and even if it’s not the one you want, it’s a difference in perspective. And that’s a good thing, ya know. Why else would you be here? That’s the whole point.

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