“Always ethnic,” Jennifer Brooks, 61, said. “But also a little bit funky.” She was talking about the ensemble she was wearing, but also about her style in general.
She works in the wine industry and was on her way home on a Friday in October when I saw her from a distance standing at a crosswalk in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. Her sunglasses and reddish brown cap caught the late afternoon light, drawing attention to the butterscotch leather jacket and orange knitwear layered beneath her denim smock. “It’s a color of essence,” she said of her orange sweater. “It’s a color of essence, like energy.”
An avid traveler who studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she has been around the world, she said, and is always hunting for new fabrics to wear. “I’m like, obsessed with textiles,” she added. “They’re super important. That’s like the major part of the outfit.”
Simbarashe Cha is a Times photographer and visual columnist documenting style and fashion around the world.
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