I think the following pitch would be quite at home in the freelance pile of the New York Times’ vacuous and self-important Sunday Styles Section:
Regarding: Sunday Styles Feature-Brunch Couture
Dear New York Times Sunday Styles Section:
I would like to propose a story which I believe would fit quite well with the aura of the Sunday Styles section and would mirror the concerns of Styles’ readers. New Yorkers and Styles’ readers hold two instituions dear: brunch and fashion. They (we) are willing to pay top dollar for both.
A New Yorker cannot just go out to brunch, though, s/he must dress for Sunday sightings. Even the hungover, just-rolled-out-of-bed New Yorker who pops into the local diner knows how to look brunch chic. This is why the Sunday Styles section must do a shoot around hot brunch spots in Manhattan (Chelsea, West Village, East Village, Lower East Side, SoHo, etc.) and Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Park Slope, Boerum Hill, perhaps Bushwick?) to chronicle what New York’s brunch goers are wearing when they sit down to french toast and eggs benedict.
We anticipate big sunglasses (though currently on the outs, they are still the first thing you must reach for to hide bags and bleary hangover eyes), Meredith Grey’s sweatpants, Balenciaga city bags, Marc Jacobs wellies, Repetto ballet shoes, etc.
I look forward to the Times featuring brunch at its most glamorous.
I would totally read this article. I mean, brunch is an underappreciated opportunity to flaunt the latest trends in loungewear. All those girls who wore their sweats to class in college have to have some use for them in the real world, and it’s tragic that they should not be lauded for their continuing superior sense of grunge/lounge fashion.
True, Robin. There’s no reason grunge/lounge cannot be appreciated, as long as it’s consciously loungey.
What’s wrong with sweatpants?
Nothing, we’re talking more about the context in which they are worn. When they are worn to a restaurant, the wearer appears to either (1) not care how s/he looks (2) want to parlay sweatpants into restaurant-appropriate, possibly stylish attire.
That’s exactly my point– if people don’t care how they look at brunch, them more power to them. The racket that most restaurants run around here for brunch, which is just a way for them to add to their margins by serving food that mostly consists of eggs and pre-mixed bloody marys, doesn’t demand much more sartorially. Your second point is understandable though. Some girls at UVA who ran with a certain crowd would wear sweatpants with nice polo shirts, which sort of defeats their effortless functionality by making them part of some bizarre “look.”
I see nothing wrong with dressing up a little, especially if it makes one feel nice, which it does for me.