Lexington Style

Image via Ralph Lauren.

Ralph Lauren famously once stated, "I could design my entire collection based solely on the style of three places: The Hamptons, Santa Fe and Lexington, Kentucky."  In 2006, Esquire Magazine named Kentucky the most stylish state in the Union.  And, legendary designers Mark Badgley and James Mischka's Central Kentucky horse farm is said to be as fabulous as their bridal designs. (Which, in a related note, why am I not BFF with Badgley Mischka? I think we've just set my goal for 2012, y'all.)

Image via Ralph Lauren

Lexington is far from a world fashion capital.  It'll never be confused with Milan, Paris, or New York.  But its style is undeniable.  It's still the kind of town where people dress up for a nice restaurant.  You don't see flip-flops or dressy shorts at cocktail parties, nor do "dressy jeans" constitute dinner attire.  It's the kind of place where a small-town haberdasher bases his collection directly on an suit designed for Edward VIII.

But, yet, Lexington seems neither as formal nor as over-the-top as these images suggest.  That Lexington style boasts a heavy equestrian influence is undeniable, but it's far less garish and in-your-face than Mr. Lauren would have you believe.  The town's truly horsey folk are often seen in faded, relaxed jeans and barn jackets, and their broken-in boots are constantly caked in mud.  And, Lexington never stops being an SEC college town.  When I think of Lexington's style, I immediately envision preppy frat boys in navy blazers and khakis tailgating at Keeneland with their sundress-clad girlfriends.  I picture the Junior League Horse Show, which boasts more per-capita Lilly Pulitzer dresses than the Breakers on Labor Day weekend.  I picture the ubiquitous needlepoint  and horse-harness belts.  And, then, I picture all the blue.

Kentucky Girl Dress via Red Dress Boutique

Wildcat Blue is everywhere in Lexington.  It isn't a gameday tradition; it's an everyday tradition.  You see it on license plates and serving plates.  You see it on casual wear and business wear.  You see it on well-heeled season ticket holders, who occupy the floor seats and the skyboxes.  You see it on the adorable little mamaws who've driven in from nearby counties to cheer on their team.   You see it on infants, for whom fandom is a birthright.  In so many ways, it's the color of Lexington itself.

My new besties, via Elle Decor

I think that Lexington's style is a great analogy for the town itself; there are some fancy aspirations, but it never forgets its small-town roots.  There are so many influences which combine for an elegant yet easy style.  It screams "authentic" rather than "couture."  It's way more than a brand name, a label, or a single "style."  It's a pretty, tasteful aesthetic as graceful as the Central Kentucky countryside.

But, of course, if Bagdley and Mischka ("Mark and James" to me, natch, since we're soon to be besties) want to meet me at Jonathan's for a cocktail soon, I'm all about the labels...

My Kentucky: Lexington Born and Louisville Bred

I was born in Lexington but grew up in Louisville, among a family of storytellers whose tales are so tied to this place that the stories and their settings are impossible to separate. When I was a child, my family would get in the car and embark on a family history tour of Louisville. We’d visit the sites of my grandmother’s stories, and she’d come along to narrate. Hearing her tales was and still is fascinating; it gave even the most mundane places in my hometown a sense of personal history.

Because of those stories and that tradition, my Kentucky is all tied up with the places where life has unfolded.

My Kentucky is the old JP Kayrouz, where my mother would take me for Benedictine sandwiches on days I was off of school. It’s dashing across the street to Plehn’s Bakery for almond macaroons after lunch, and I swear those macaroons still taste like freedom.

My Kentucky is the St. Matthews Woman’s Club, where I put on white gloves and went through a receiving line every Friday night of my early adolescence. It’s the agony and the ecstasy of Southern cotillion rituals; it's surviving it all somehow and being rewarded with a cookie and a bottle of Coke at the end of the night.

My Kentucky is that stretch of road on Frankfort Avenue, where as a teenager I once experienced the transcendence that only a newly-earned drivers license and a song by the Cranberries can provide.

My Kentucky is heading to Dee’s Crafts each April to design my Derby hat. It’s the ability to pair the hat with the ribbon with the flowers to coordinate with the dress. It’s the instinct, possessed by Louisville girls, that dictates exactly how much is too much; it's knowing to stop just before you cross that line.

My Kentucky is the BW-3’s in St. Matthews, where I met my husband through mutual friends as we gathered to watch UK play in the Maui Invitational Tournament. It’s the corner of Breckinridge Lane and Shelbyville Road, where we shared a thrilling first kiss a few months later. (As my grandmother would say, “He chased me until I caught him.”)

My Kentucky is the bridge I crossed to leave for Chicago when I was a new bride. It was the same bridge that brought us home for good with our first baby a few years later. (Incidentally, don’t get us Louisvillians started on the topic of bridges).

My Kentucky is the Highlands home I share with my husband and two young daughters. It’s drinking wine and playing cards on the porch after the girls go to bed. It’s the tree-lined streets where we walk and drive, the restaurants where we eat, the parks where we play. It’s stopping for coffee at the Heine Brothers in Douglass Loop, and knowing that my great-grandparents once shopped at the market there. It’s the comfort of knowing that the places that once were theirs are mine now.

Kentucky fits me in a way no place else does, and living here gives me the opportunity to share this place with my two little girls. How could I ever properly pass Kentucky along to them if we lived anywhere else? It’s more than a story I could tell them, or a recipe I could make for them. It’s more than wearing Wildcat blue or a Derby hat. Kentucky can be appreciated in pieces, from afar, but you have to live every day among its places and its people to truly understand.

In Photos: Fasig-Tipton and Kentucky Horse Park

I wanted to share some photos from some of the land between the Kentucky Horse Park

and Fasig-Tipton near Lexington. When I think of what I am proud of about Kentucky, the beauty from these places can't be ignored. As a

reluctant Kentuckian

, I am ashamed to say I lived in Lexington for over 10 years and never saw this beauty. Shame.

These were taken while I was completing a half-marathon, and weren't all taken by my camera. They're in a jumble of photos from the event on my computer, mixed between my camera, my friend Amber's camera.

Seriously. How could you not think this is beautiful?

You don't see this everyday! (In Kentucky Horse Park)

In Fasig-Tipton

Entry to Fasig-Tipton

Look! The Lexington Police even made an appearance escorting my slow self down Newtown Pike!

It's amazing what you can see if you just break out of your little bubble!

My Kentucky: Paducah & Beyond

My Kentucky is the land of my ancestors - generations of people who have inhabited the same hills and streams and towns I call home.

My Kentucky is the place of my birth. It is my roots. It is my past. It is the start of my story.

My Kentucky is the centerpiece of my childhood where every 4th of July was spent on Kentucky Lake and every Christmas downtown at my great-grandmother's house on Jefferson Street.

My Kentucky is the place I couldn't wait to escape from as a teenager when every familiar place and friendly face seemed like a prison.

My Kentucky offered up a new life to me in college, when I drove east along the Western Kentucky Parkway singing Wide Open Spaces at the top of my lungs.

My Kentucky was independence and "big" city living in Lexington as I crossed North Broadway a thousand times and learned who I was during my time at Transy.

My Kentucky wasn't home for five years. Five years spent defending her to anyone who dare insult her good name.

My Kentucky waited patiently for me to return - secretly knowing all along that the only thing my children could or would ever be were Kentuckians.

My Kentucky has opened up a whole new life for me. A life I never dreamed possible.

My Kentucky is the promised land - rolling hills of green and dirt roads and wide open sky that fills you up and make you whole.

My Kentucky is one of the great loves of my life. There always. Supporting me. Loving me. Inspiring me.

My Kentucky: A Lexington Late Bloomer

Fried chicken, horses, white picket fences and farms.

Yuck.

These were my reactions when I learned that my family was moving to Kentucky. Granted, I was only 12 at the time, but based on whatever I “knew” about Kentucky, this was going to suck. I liked Georgia. I was leaving my world of friends, sweet tea, peaches, boiled peanuts and grits.

At Keeneland

Unfortunately, I fought Kentucky for years. My introverted nature made it hard to make friends, and I always longed for a different place. I spent my high school summers at fat camp near San Diego, where I tried to convince people that even though I lived in Kentucky, I wore shoes and didn’t have a horse. I dreamed of going to college in California, which seemed so large and amazing to me. I applied to several California universities and got in to them. Imagine my crazy disappointment when the financial aid and scholarships weren’t enough to convince my parents (who were going through a divorce and my mom was dealing with a degenerative neurological disease) to spend $20K per year plus all my expenses when I could go to the University of Kentucky for next-to-nothing.

I grunted and grumbled and dreamed of other, more exotic places I could be. (Yes, at that time I thought California was “exotic.” Silly me). I was an advertising major, and went to an advertising conference in NYC and decided that I could go to California OR New York. And for that point, I could also go to Chicago or Atlanta. Truly, my stubborn mind wanted to be anywhere but Kentucky.

Looking back, I can see where my loyalties started to change. My freshman year I went to UK basketball games and joined the frenzy of the Big Blue Nation. I had blue eyeliner to write “UK” on my cheeks, and had blue nail polish to match. I went to Keeneland a few times and liked the pretty horses. I met a down-home Kentucky boy and fell in love. I was hooked, for better or for worse.

My blood turned blue when I got to grad school. I quit my job and went into an intensive MBA program at UK. There, I spread my Lexington wings and finally learned how to fly. Nights downtown sitting outside a bar nursing a bourbon and diet coke after a day of tailgaiting, horse races and socializing at Keeneland. I discovered the Lexington Farmers Market, apple picking at Boyds Orchard, events at The Limestone Club, and corn hole in the backyard. And vineyards - did you know Kentucky has many of them, on old tobacco land? This girl even got married in one, under the speldor of the Kentucky fall (on the day that UK beat LSU's #1 ranked football team, no less. The UK fight song erupted over the DJs speakers). My grooms cake was Lexington's famous Spalding donuts, and we drank Kentucky wine and Kentucky beer.

I now hang out with a friend in her Highlands neighborhood in Louisville, wandering up and down Bardstown Road along with the hipsters in the hoodies and prepsters with Bugaboos. I even *gasp* joined the Junior League and quickly learned to appreciate all things Lilly Pulitzer, but more importantly, the value of serving the community. This summer I experienced my first Kentucky lake, with the beautiful surroundings and friendly, beer-drinking boaters. The rest of my family left Kentucky years ago, and I've chosen to stay here.

I may have been a late bloomer, but now, my Kentucky is my home.

My Kentucky: Heartland & Lexington

I grew up in Elizabethtown, Kentucky; Elizabethtown is a booming and growing city located about 35 minutes south of Louisville. Elizabethtown, or E-town as it's known by locals, was always known for being the "city" in close proximity to Fort Knox. This fact made E-town somewhat of a transient city. I had several friends growing up who were from military families that would move to E-town for a few years and then set sail to another city. As a matter of fact, I often find myself wondering what happened to those long lost elementary friends. My parents took me to Louisville frequently starting at a young age. As I turned 16, I was eager and willing to load my car up with girlfriends and head up to the malls in Louisville to shop.

After High School I attended The University of Kentucky. I quickly fell in love with Lexington as it was much different than the central Kentucky area that I was accustomed to. Lexington had that southern charm and small town feel while being a bigger city. I would move back to Lexington in a heartbeat. I love everything about that city. Springtime is a time of renewal- I have fond memories of walking at the UK Arboretum and gearing up for the Keeneland spring meet. Fall means back to school and the Woodland Arts fair.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't miss Kentucky. I go back quite often to visit my parents in Elizabethtown and pop in to Lexington and Louisville every now and again.

My Kentucky: Eastern, Central and Beyond...

My Kentucky is a sleepy rural town where every grocery shopping trip includes a half hour or so for socializing.

My Kentucky is hitting up tailgates in the Orange, Blue and Purple Lots, making plans for the following day's races, and analyzing the Dribble-Drive offense.

My Kentucky is being seated between Congressional candidates and tattooed hipsters at the latest Highlands hotspot, and finding neither to be out of place.

I grew up in a tiny Eastern Kentucky coal camp town of five hundred or so people,  the same town where my parents were high school sweethearts.  My paternal grandparents each logged four decades of service to the local school system, and countless people learned to read under my grandmother's instruction.  It's the kind of town where everyone is a teetotaler, despite the fact that most of us are descended from a moonshiner or two.  It's the kind of town where church dinners and high school basketball games are still important community events.  It's the kind of town where you're never asked your name at the pharmacy or the dry cleaners.  Everyone simply knows who you are.

Like most small-town Kentuckians, I moved to Lexington for college when I was seventeen.  Here, I learned about a way of Kentucky life that was as foreign to me as the customs of far-off continents.  Horse farms and bourbon and country clubs weren't a part of the Kentucky of my childhood, nor was rush hour traffic. Soon, I found that Lexington was more a large town than a small city -- it was friendly, inviting and comfortable.  I stayed in Lexington for several years after college and grad school; I cheered on my beloved Wildcats, watched the races at Keeneland, and attended more Cheapside Happy Hours than one should proudly acknowledge.  I found that I truly loved the vibe and aesthetic of that town; I proudly adopted its equestrian-prep clothing and needlepoint belts as well as  its slavish devotion to the "inside the Circle" lifestyle.  Lexington became the town I love.

I moved to Louisville for work in my late twenties.  Ironically enough, it was in the most fast-paced, Midwestern city in Kentucky that I fell in love with a fellow Eastern Kentuckian, with whom I'd attended undergrad.  We quickly came to love the quirky Highlands neighborhood where we settled.  We found ourselves immersed in a foodie culture, setting our Saturday morning alarm clocks early enough to beat the local sous chefs to the farmers' market.   We took our Labrador puppy to Starbucks and Irish pubs, where he was treated like a rock star.  We kept Louisville weird, as they say.  Or, at least as weird as a corporate lawyer and a Junior Leaguer can keep things.

A few years ago, my beau and I moved to Nashville for his work.  As we made friends and contacts in the Music City, I found myself speaking for all things Kentucky: I gave advice on baking with bourbon (that Tennessee swill will never be bourbon. End of story.), buying Derby tickets, tailgating in Lexington,  making quilts, and the best restaurants along every major highway in the state.  I found that, despite the cognitive dissonance I'd always assigned to the three chapters of my Kentucky life, I simply knew and loved my home state.  And, when we eventually moved back to Lexington, we realized that any corner of the Commonwealth was "home."