
The guy I was to be seeing sent me an email which asked the question: “Flats or heels?”
It was followed with a “Just kidding,” but I later discovered that, like most French men, he treats fashion seriously, complementing me on my bag, and then my jacket at separate points in the evening.
But it is even better that he seemed simultaneously in on the joke--the arbitrary hot-or-not, in-or-out, of each season. Or at least this is better if you are me, if you sometimes find it impossible to treat the thing you love, fashion, with reverence. (Clothes! Have you ever noticed that they are silly?)
I had laughed appreciatively at his email. “FLATS, DEFINITELY,” I typed, adding, “More Parisian.”
If this excellent International Herald Tribune article by Tara Mulholland had come out before Friday, I could simply have pointed him there. She thinks about the question a little more carefully than “they’re more Parisian,” and she asked me to weigh in (my own self-conscious word choice), which I do. Twice!
And for the sake of good impressions--because, yes, Friday was a first date--when I’m not thinking about shoes, I am reading Dostoevsky.
Hey, it might be true. You don’t really know, do you?