I have two comments about this picture.

Ella Catliff. Photo from NYMag.com

Comment #1: Her thighs are impossibly skinny.

Comment #2: Is there some magical age at which I will finally gain the illusive ability to wear blacks and browns at the same time and not feel like I am breaking the law? Because, seriously. I have outlandish and overbearing guilt about mixing brown and black. When I was little, my mom taught me three things about color. #1: Don’t mix brown and black. #2: Don’t wear navy and black together, either. And #3: Red is the only color that you can’t mix with purple.

Whether she was right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. These three points of color-mixing are deeply embedded into my fashion sense. They are as real to me as the self-evident truths were to our nation’s founding fathers. And while I’m not trying to strip anyone of their unalienable rights, I would like to be able to confidently mix brown and black without feeling like I was committing treason.