Philadelphia Street Style: Sofia, 17th St

My style radar, I've noticed, doesn't work as well in the fall. It gets mixed signals and an overload of messages. The more fashionable among us cover up many of their most ostentatious attributes when it gets cold out. And the less fashionable put on coats, pop their collars, spruce up their outfits with scarves and caps, take on, in other words, many of the embellishments one might otherwise associate with looking cool. There is a kind of equalizing that happens in the autumn, a balancing of opposites. You have to get pretty close to people to get some sense of how awesome they're going to look on camera. So I have to remind myself of a lesson I've learned dozens of times over while doing this project: don't pay too much attention to the clothes. Concentrate, instead, on body language, posture, and walk. I do some of that. But I also get easily seduced by color. You see so little of it this time of year that it really stands out when you do. That's what first caught my eye about Sofia.

Sofia has spent much of her life abroad, and the hat she picked up from a flea market in Nepal. It has something of a Himalayan feel to it. The pants come from an equally international, though decidedly less regionally specific, source: Zara. The sweater is vintage via Buffalo Exchange. The boots are Michael Kors. And the peacoat, well, we couldn't quite figure that out, even after looking at the tag.