Stepping Gingerly Into the Heat - Shortage woman Clothes

This is the new economy, as they are often reminded, & there’s something mechanical & method about how people put themselves together for these first hot days. As I went around the city — Herald Square, the West Village, Union Square — I sensed that women were glad to be outside but not sure what to put on their feet. They were not ready for sandals or perhaps they had found some spring clothes they liked but not yet the right shoe.

In the elderly economy, a furnace blast of heat would have brought out the latest spring clothes. Fueled by massive spending, stores had the goods early, & three of the discombobulating aspects of spring dressing was how suddenly spiffed-up everything looked in New York, as if all the city’s doormen had hosed the sidewalks tidy of winter garments.

I thought a woman I saw in the West Village had the right idea. They had on a pair of slim linen shorts in a faded brick red with a white cotton shirt & a pair of laced-up espadrilles. I also saw a woman in a sleeveless, draped black cotton jersey dress with a sharp pair of toeless ankle boots with a modest heel.

So they were wearing knee-high boots, probably the same knocked-around pair they wore last week with a raincoat. You could imagine how they arrived at this choice. (Hey, we’ve all been there.) They had an adorable light-colored dress or cotton miniskirt they wanted to wear on a pretty day, but then they thought the familiar boots would be comfortable & spare them from looking excessively dressed for spring. So plenty of complications, so plenty of ugly boots.

In the park at Union Square, plenty of women were in shorts & baby-doll tops, in stripped-down mode, & I saw a quantity of women trying to make a beach tunic or a massive scarf work. Stripes, though plentiful, were looking passé.

There is no shortage of cotton jersey. At Macy’s, it was odd to leave the giddy flower show on the main floor & ride the escalators up to the crammed racks of denim & cotton jersey daubed with every kind of sparkle & ruffle — odd because the point of the displays appeared to be consume, consume! & not smell the flowers & enjoy.