Taking the Car out of Carbon

Fashion in Transit

So, I was trading emails with a new found friend and fellow blogger, Rachel Northrop. Rachel quit her job as a NYC school teacher to tell the story of coffee. She is in Columbia, working on coffee plantations, meeting with the people grow and process the beans and getting a an understanding for coffee that includes the smell of moist earth, not just of roasted bean.

Rachel wrote: “Your most recent blog pic of the stunning woman in conjunction with the Dutch Midtrafik video made me wish I were a tasteful documentarian so I could do a series of youtube videos with the tag line, “if you drive you must have something to hide; I take mass transit to be seen,” featuring all manner of people ready to show off their style. It’s true the subway often functions as a fashion show; I swear most city trends evolve from the fusion of what people see as they ride.”

Which made me think how true her words were. People make fashion statements all the time on the subway. It is, after all, our town square. Yet I have never really thought about it. Well not never…I did post about the no-pants subway ride. But that was more about the absence rather than the fashionable presence of clothes. A little googling revealed, that there have been fashion shows on subway trains and there is certainly a parade of eye popping good looks in the subway everyday. So here is a post about how people on the subway are making statements by what they wear…or not.