What to Wear: Thanksgiving Fashion

My fashion blogger life got changed from something descending from the heavens. By “something,” I mean my folks.

According to my parents, seeing the Big Apple for the first time, not to mention paying me my first visit since moving to the city two years ago, apparently called for plenty of clothing from my one-time employer, hunting, fishing and camping store Gander Mountain as well as selections from their local Premium Outlet Center. (The Web site has a giveaway for Carhartt clothing on its home page.)

Given their status as Minnesota transplants now living in Hawaii and are thus well insulated from the whims of cold-weather fashion, their classic-yet-simple approach to fashion would make sense. But for my part, how do I make my often-eclectic sartorial tendencies (note to self: earmark that phrase as a name for my new noise band) translate into a look comprehensible to them? Never mind one befitting the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, their temporary home through next Wednesday.

Well, to round them up into a cab into Midtown from New York’s LaGuardia Airport, I settled on the same dress and vintage United Airlines scarf I’m wearing here [click here to see]. Even though they were flying the sportier-outfitted Delta, the look had a good mod-slash-shock less bourgeois-effect.

For yesterday’s Thanksgiving dinner at the Upper West Side bistro Bar Boulud, I settled for a look both urban and urbane. I donned a vintage leather blazer (with patches hastily hand-sewn back together that morning) as well as a coordinating A-line shirt dress from Williamsburg’s Built by Wendy boutique, pictured here thrown over my wire shelving unit. Collarbone-length pearls topped off the look and lent an air of extra dimension to the dress’ high neck.

My tour of Madison and Fifth Ave shopping personally curated for my parents will call for 80s vintage Yves Saint Laurent—after all, what’s more flash than Reagan-era billowing silk sleeves whilst gazing at stores whose price points render them near-museums to most passersby?

Tomorrow I will break the ‘rents into Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Oh Franklin and Grand, how shall I dress for thee?

In any event, I know my dad will feel right at home with his Carhartt pants.

So how about all of you out there in interwebs land? Have you had to make adjustments to your usual attire this holiday weekend so as not to upset your old-lady-perfume-wearing kin? Or do you just flaunt your fashion freak?