Who's gatekeeping?🔑

I sometimes lament not living in a walkable city because it’s so much easier to wear allll your clothes when a quick walk to the corner bodega for Colombian roses and cinnamon sticks feels like an opportunity to get dressed, something that doesn’t happen as often in the deafening silence of the suburbs in the era of Instacart.

Sitting in my car every morning to drop my kids off, I think about the days I walked from my old NYC apartment on 82nd Street to the 86th Street station in 32-degree weather. The glamorous memory of wearing my nice coats and gloves and boots in the streets of the UES fades quickly, though, when I place my hands on my minivan's warm steering wheel and sink deeper into its soft, heated leather seats.

When we arrive at school after a 30-minute drive, I walk my kids in carrying only my car keys as I need my hands free for holding their hand, fixing their braids, or, on days when they are feeling cool and don’t want mommy holding their hand, carrying their backpacks and 250-pound Stanleys.

One thing I’ve noticed is that on days that I am wearing pants or anything with a belt loop, I’ve been regularly hanging my minivan keys in this manner:

Minivan FOB/keys and Apple AirTag hanging from COS pant belt loop.

Jeff’s car FOB and keys hanging from Dickies painter’s pants belt loop.

The day I noticed the repeated pattern of keys hanging from my belt loop, I immediately thought of three specific moments in fashion:

1. Willy Chavarria’s Spring 2025 collection

where he styled models wearing key rings hanging from their pant loops:

When I saw pictures of this show, I remember having a very visceral reaction to the keys.

They made me think of fancy NYC apartment lobbies where supervisors’ steps are melodized by the cling-cling of their bulky keychains.

They made me think of immigrant workers in service jobs.

They made me think of prison guards.

They made me think of homes you never return to.

They made me think of doors that never opened.

2. This Ashley Olsen street style photo

Walking—presumably in snowy NYC—with keys in hand, likely heading back to The Row atelier after a very chic, very well documented coffee/smoke break.

3. Look 6 from Maison Margiela’s Spring 1999 show

How can one forget this genius, endlessly replicated show?

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I’ve always been intrigued by practical objects becoming fashion accessories:

Glove coin purse wrapped with what appears to be earphones hanging from a belt. By Margiela, of course. Unrelated but I found these Margiela sequin gloves similar to the ones Lutz Huelle showed for Spring 2025.

The utilitarian married with the designed:

Lemaire’s castanet mirror necklace, which is utilitarian whether you want to check if your under-eye concealer has caked or if you’re actually performing in a zarzuela.

and let me once again reiterate the beauty and function of this vintage Avon perfume bottle necklace (there’s an intact eggplant shaped one on eBay)

Whether it's because you need your hands free to hug your kids goodbye or to constantly open and close doors—both literally and figuratively—personal style often emerges in the mundane. It’s always there, waiting, in the small, unremarkable rituals of the day.

Levi’s 501s, The Row blazer, vintage Ferragamo pumps (found new on TRR (!!!!))

Longchamp leather keychain, my mom’s house keys.

Because personal style feels the most personal when it’s not artificially manufactured, in a vacuum, but instead fits naturally into the context of my real life—regardless of what the industry proclaims as the latest accessory or what my favorite influencers post, especially those who fail to disclose they’re being paid to promote something as the next big thing. Not to go off on a tangent, but don’t you resent constantly feeling suspicious or defensive whenever you read fashion content, scanning for cues of paid promotion? I don’t mind being sold something; I just want to know when I’m being sold something. Lately, it seems harder to tell whether I’m reading a vulnerable piece about a creator’s childhood or an infomercial in disguise.

Home keys and earphones worn as a necklace over Aritzia sweatshirt, H&M shorts, Avec Les Filles coat, Unisa silver flats.

The role of the designer, like Margiela and Chavarria, is to transform these seemingly ordinary objects into fashion—ideally with an intention that goes beyond mere profit: to infuse them with meaning and depth, to convert the pain they sometimes symbolize into beauty. To sublimate.

My mom’s house keys worn as a pendant on my grandma’s gold necklace, Willy Chavarria’s Hooligan sweatshirt, old-Tibi silk skirt via Poshmark.

For a night out: house keys, coquito charms by Dezso, shell pendants by Tallahassee local artist Briley Cotton Gunter, Jeff’s coat that is pretty much now mine, Tibi skirt, cotton sweater.

What I actually wore to drop my kids off this morning: my minivan keys and Longchamp leather keychain hanging from belt loop of COS wide-leg pants, same coat and sweater from previous image, and Unisa silver flats.

My role as a consumer? To discern what is truly worth buying, which creators genuinely deserve my support, what resonates on a deeper level, and which stories are worth telling. Not as a moral pursuit but just for the sake of good old discernment. Let alone self-respect.

<3

Laura.