Brat

I am going to Paris for New Year's. 

Go me!

I have some friends who are going to be there and asked if I wanted to join them. This trip is crazy short notice, but I thought "Why am I saying no to this?" 

The trip will be a blast, even if more than half of it is a solo trip as my friends connected with their own family and friends in Paris.

Anyway, I was talking to a friend tonight about my trip. She has family in Paris and travels there often. She saw in my Brat green coat, and gently and kindly reminded that women in Paris wear black and neutral. I forgot I was wearing my bright puffer jacket. I bought it last fall. I thought it was garish, but garish was exactly what I wanted. I wanted something that makes people's eye sore when they look at it as I bike to work. The bright color is also useful for crossing the street in the dark relative to my dark gray puffer. I didn't know it was Brat green until a friend told me last week. In the past year, I've gotten a surprising number of compliments on this jacket that I initially thought was ugly.

My friend is right about how Parisian women dress, and of course I want to look like a local. (When I was in Paris in high school, a french person asked me for directions, which--not gonna lie--was a highlight of my life.) 

Nevertheless...

I think I might wear my Brat jacket in Paris. Fuck it neutrals. Fuck black and beige. I've worn dark colors and neutrals my entire life. Who cares what the Parisians think of me? I mean, I'll be wearing my Brat coat over my dark gray dress and black leggings, so the rest of me will be wearing my french uniform. Ironically before the sartorial conversation, my friend and I were talking about embracing the messiness of life. "Life grows in the mud," she said. I'll take a page from our dinner conversation and go with the bold, the messy, the uncertain, the unpredictable. I'll go Brat.

Let's see what happens. If next season all of the Parisian women are wearing bright colors, you'll know where it started.