The Style Brief

When I worked at the Skechers in Times Square (yes,lol), I was a terrible saleswoman. I got lost telling customers the origins of things (which I had no business doing). I was a cashier girl in love with the stock boys. I had one job: take the money, put it in the register, give change, compliment, repeat.

My friend Phenia, who is now Dr. Phenia, was phenomenal. Her five-one frame ran up and down the stockroom steps delivering two and three pairs at a time, squeezing through metal aisles, remembering what went where like the back of her hand. She came dressed to the nines each shift, hair laid with Kimi oil and the perfect manicure. Years later, when our paths continued to cross, she departed to teach math in China. I had babies and asked her to be the second godmother to one. I got it by then, the saleswoman of it all. She could sell anything—even the idea of leaving to teach in a foreign country to someone like me, who couldn’t imagine leaving Brooklyn back them. I was an art girl. Brooklyn was my palette.

At 36—the first years of my adult life in an office—when a 20-something-coworker mentions a designer, let’s say Jonathan Anderson, I’m relieved when I understand what she means. But there are many days and many names I don’t understand. Too new? Too niche? I have wondered, longer than these young women have been alive (although they bring much joy to my life), what is that sea, the great expanse that sets us apart.

My version of cool is knowing what Joan Didion wore when she was photographed between those two books. Theirs is something else entirely. But I’ve come to understand that I don’t think I know anything differently from them. We have just come to understand style— and in large part, culture, within varying degrees. This is to say nothing of the ten years between us. ( Everyone knows that generation gap matters in computerverse. The kids born before and after ‘92 understand the world differently.)

Last summer, on the cusp of starting a job leading digital content (social, a magazine, a podcast ) which required being in an office, I wanted to—as the old heads would say—act my age.