I love piping on a shirt. It feels so French to me, probably because of that knack the Fnch have for making special. A certain attention to detail. Every meal is an event, every shopping excursion, every…well, pretty much everything. You can have a plain white shirt, which is cool and elegant in and of itself, and then you can have a white shirt with a slight edge. The designer Agnes B excels ar this sort of thing. I excelled at it when I was a child enrolled at a private school on the Upper East Side. We had a uniform, a pinafore, and with that pinafore I wore a series of white shirts, all carefully chosen by my exacting mother, all with Peter Pan collars edged in red or some other primary color. To match the uniform, of course.

I was not wearing piping at the Gianni Colombo opening at Greene Naftali last Thursday night. I was wearing black jeans and a grey sweater from Zadig et Voltaire, a favorite garment and a favorite store. It was one of those nights when I was having trouble getting dressed, and I didn’t really want to go out, but I didn’t really want to do anything else either. I’m trying to meet new people–most of my friends are married with kids and I’m not–and, as I’m constantly telling myself, I’ve already met everyone who lives in my apartment. So I pulled myself together and went to Chelsea.

I’m glad I did. The Colombo show was light hearted and fun, and included three sets of vertigo inducing stairs, ceramic sculptures, and paintings involving wire, neutral colors and plexiglass. I also met a nice group of ladies, all of them artists–a potential art posse (I often go to openings alone.) We joked that the name Gianni Colombo sounded like a coffee drink, and if you’ve ever lived in the Bay Area you might agree with me when I say that if it were a coffee drink, it would definitely be served at Philz.

All in all, going out was a good move. The lesson? As my mom often says, sometimes you do have to force yourself.