hike your skirts and rouge your lips

i've always taken pride in my hometown, pairing a dry, self-deprecating appreciation for staten island with an unrelenting defense for its unique place within the quintet of boroughs that make up new york city. over time, it's become clear that this fierce love for the city's varied aesthetic significantly affects my view of fashion, for better or worse. though i've been known to have brief flings with diverse looks, the old "when in rome.." adage holds no sartorial weight with me, as i simply can't adhere to the doctrine of say, running shoes and big-brimmed hats while traversing the four kingdoms of disney world or the waspy pastels and crisp collars of the prep set here in the thick of the ivy league.

of course, there are some exceptions. but even while i aspire to the pouty irreverence of kiraz's parisiennes, it's the whimsically elegant blonde streak and murderously slim cut of holly golightly's evening dress at dawn, the bold colors and childishly mismatched look of fort greene's ghostwriter crew, the gaudy gold and wild nail art of my high school classmates, and the insouciant masculinity of annie hall that instantly come to mind each morning when i play dress up.

that said, i'm prone to obsession, and it doesn't take much to make me want to wholly immerse myself in another stylistic world. in the case of wildfox couture, all it took was a lookbook. after stumbling across their website on a computer at refinery29 over the summer, i found myself returning to pore over the vampiresque fall '09 images and previous seasons' lookbook time and again. the kooky, girlish sexiness of the pieces captured within a set of meticulously haphazard and hazy images seemed at once quintessentially californian—t-shirts with 'i ♥ la' and 'malibu girl' really drove the point home.

yet despite the paparazzi shots of less-than-stellar style icons like lauren conrad and miley cyrus donning wildfox couture, the faded, timeworn tinge on wildfox couture's cheeky pieces makes it appear accessible, even to a black-clad, menswear-loving new yorker like myself. it may just be the westward road trip my roommates and i have been planning lately but i'm really itching to get some wildfox into my wardrobe.

[image credits: wildfox couture]