Sure, our nation continues its descent into a dystopian nightmare, but haute Laura Ingalls Wilder was all over the spring 2020 runway at Viktor & Rolf:

If I ever feel like my own versions of Liberty florals and ruffles are too much, I’ll just look at these. Maybe next season I’ll add a hat!

I don’t know where I got the notion that I need a classic leather moto jacket but here we are, a 20-year vegetarian (who, admittedly, does buy leather shoes) pining for something not only impractical and unethical, but hella expensive.

Expensive and GORGEOUS:

(I’m not linking any of these because I don’t want to give my dad a heart attack. But first image is Madewell; second is LTH JKT, which has an eyeroll-y name but seems about as ethical as a leather company can get.)

The Dry Down perfume newsletter talked about leather fragrances last year; I dug up the archives and they’re on to me:

The leather jacket is a bizarre luxury object: Toughness, rebellion, and the ghosts of motorcycle gangs, sold by fashion houses at the same prices as a high-end handbag or an evening gown. For most of us, a leather jacket is a little bit of a fake, and a little bit of a lie. It’s promising more than we can deliver, trying to project stronger swagger than our persona can really support. Leather jackets rarely look as good as we think they will, or as good as they feel to wear. They are cumbersome, too warm or not warm enough, hard to quite match to the weather. They overwhelm most outfits that aren’t jeans and a white tank top, and paired with jeans and a white tank top they just remind you that you aren’t either young Marlon Brando or a 1990’s supermodel.

Well then.

…Did I mention there’s a sewing pattern for a classic moto jacket? And that Mood sells leather by the hide?