The Art of Style by Kit Mills 054: Lace and Gold in Midtown

Midtown during lunchtime: an irritated mix of office workers looking for a sandwich and luggage-toting tourists looking for… whatever it is they look for in Midtown. Why are you taking a picture of that McDonalds? Oh, I guess the Empire State Building is in the background. Whatever.

Getting swept up in the tidal wave of the crowd is inevitable, no matter where you’re going or what your goal is. If you’re caught in a rip tide while in the ocean, you shouldn’t try to swim against it. The same wisdom applies to crowd currents—move sideways until you’re out of the flow, then find something to hang on to. A buoy, for example, or a doorway. Doorways are hard to come by in the middle of the ocean, but there are plenty of them on 8th Avenue, which is where I saw this person taking a break to watch the crowd go by. She was standing partially in shadow, but the shiny accents on her clothes and the stark brightness of her lacy white shirt made her stand out anyway.

My pen exploded right next to her nail. Hooray for Photoshop.

Gold ink doesn’t scan very well (though it looks pretty good in photos, like these two detail shots) so it’s more or less pointless to use in a piece that’s going to live its life on a website. That’s all right, though. Like fashion, it’s not always about the audience, it’s also for the user.

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