In Transition…

Helmut Lang blazer
Uniqlo sweater
Sezane jeans
Jonak mules
Chanel handbag
RayBan Wayfarer sunglasses
Celine necklace
Aurate NY ring (c/o)
Daisy London earrings (c/o)
Location: The Manitoba Legislature – Winnipeg, Manitoba

The transition between summer and fall can be, with the right weather, an idyllic time. Crisp air, warm golden afternoon light, leaves crunching under foot, warm scarves wrapped over cozy sweaters… while I’ll always be a summer girl, I can see the appeal. But the reality of the time between summer and winter so often differs from what we envision. By the this time last year, we were already buried until two feet of snow. Just back from Greece, I’d barely finished packing away my shorts and blazer season ended over night. Even when winter doesn’t arrive prematurely, we often experience autumn as grey and rainy. That means that transitional style, such as it is, just means wearing everything with a trench coat over top.

But this year… this year, we’ve had a beautiful fall. What a bright, glorious season. Crisp leaves in amber and mahogany hues litter the ground. Every day feels like the perfect day to pull out another favourite coat.

And yet, I’ve had precious few opportunities to take advantage. While my recovery has gone just about as smoothly as possible, I’m still not super active. Most days, I sleep for an hour after work and am still in bed by nine pm. I took my favourite blazers on a couple of socially distant outings before surgery, but since then, they’ve hung in my closet, largely neglected in favour of oversized sweater that pair well with sweatpants.

This is hardly a complaint. I know I’ll continue to benefit from these weeks of downtime for years to come. But watching the loveliest fall in recent memory happen outside my window while I sit inside, dreaming of all the ways I could transition my wardrobe for fall to winter that I’m missing out on is, admittedly, a bit sad. By the time I’m really getting up an out, the days of blazers and bare ankles will be gone for another year.

I’ll just have to hope we’re lucky enough to have an equally beautiful season next year, because this year, while the seasons transition, I’m in transition, too. It’s a somewhat strange sensation to look back on these photos, I confess. They are only weeks old, but I look so different now than I did when they were taken that I almost don’t recognise myself. (Or I wouldn’t, but for the familiar tilted and turned poses of a woman trying to conceal a body part she doesn’t love; poses I worked to develop over years in front of the camera.) And yet, when I look in the mirror, the body it reflects back at me is not the same one I’ll see when I look again even a few weeks from now.

It’s a beautiful season outside, but it’s a beautiful season right where I’m sitting, too – the two just look a bit different.

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