Photo: Richard Avedon

As summer tiptoes out and fall slowly creeps in, I find myself again in the most confusing part of the fiscal wardrobe year.

This week offered cool-ish mornings, warm-ish days, and chilly evenings.

It rained heavily for a few days, a few days had spotty showers, and day there were isolated thunderstorms.

There was some sunshine, a lot of clouds, and a rainbow.

This weather calls for 3/4 sleeves and a reliable purse-sized umbrella.

I love a good 3/4 sleeve shirt. The one downside, however is that I look like a complete moron when I try to put a coat or fleece on over them.

How are you supposed to do it?

Sometimes I awkwardly grab the sleeve with my hand and wrestle it through my coat sleeve, only to find it’s impossible to do the same with the remaining arm.

Sometimes I don’t have time to care and just shove my arm in the jacket, resulting in a bunched, bulky, uncomfortable sleeve.

Who said fall was cute Burberry coats, Hunter wellies, mocha lattes and knee-highs?

As for umbrellas: I had a great little Totes. It was compact, but sturdy. And when I was in London, I put it down in the entry of a restaurant along with all the others. When I left, my perfect umbrella was missing. So I took the next closest replacement, which ended up paling in comparison to my gem (side note: I had a lot of internal dialogue about “this must be how they do it in London”, which is what convinced me to A. leave my umbrella in the first place and B. take someone else’s upon leaving).

So this week, every time I got off the train, I did the Elaine dance to get into my fleece, then fought to open my rusty, rickety ‘new’ umbrella as I set out on my way.