These are fashion trends I do not understand. Allow my sartorial Andy Rooney a moment to vent.

The three-quarter sleeve: Every year around this time, there are retail stores that go crazy with the three-quarter sleeve, as if the fact that we're between winter and spring means we need a sleeve that's somewhere between long and short. Of course, like most humans with the most basic cognition/ability to make my hands into a sturdy Playmobile-like grip, I find that you can push up a long sleeve into any number of shorter positions if the need arises, so all the three-quarter does is get bunchy if I'm hot, make me wish I had more sleeve if I'm cold, and do a nice job of drawing attention to my ugly watch and arm hair. The bottom line is, I'm a grown-ass woman, I need a whole goddamned sleeve, just commit to the long sleeve or let's all keep our dignity and just get a T-shirt.

Silk: I'm a huge fan of Madewell, J. Crew's little sister brand, but both it and its more expensive elder sibling have been really into silk for the past few seasons, and while I'm flattered that they think I can afford to both purchase and maintain such garments, the fact is that if I wanted to bring something into my life that was costly and required time-consuming upkeep, I'd get a second dog. The problem is, these garments, usually dresses and shirts, are not that cute, at least not after they're worn once and become wrinkled rags stained by tears brought on by the realization of much dry cleaning will cost. They're also not usually formal enough to justify the costs, so, while silk is much classier than polyester, the designs themselves aren't, and frankly, neither am I.

Super-neon fitness footwear: I have long been out of the loop of sneaker style, but the shoes I'm talking about appear to be way more about function than Flight Club, the sneaker boutique I often pass on Broadway. Flight Club is a museum of plastic wrapped Nikes, but the sneakers I see on the feet of women scurrying to or from a gym in the parka and yoga pants, are so insanely bright that either sneaker companies discontinued using non-retina-burning colors when I wasn't paying attention, or neon suddenly became so normal that your average New York lady considers lava-hot pink to be the new black. As someone who's had the same grey running shoes for five years (and goes to the gym only to use the elliptical and watch Judge Judy), I feel distinctly blind-sided by this trend, pun completely intended.