When the Internet goes down or falters or hiccups even more than a moment (or in my case, a few hours), I am reminded of just how dependent we are on technology's supposedly inherent sanity, or at least its good sense to not have a freakout when a human is on deadline.

Meanwhile, since I was technically hamstrung, I sought out The New York Times in paper. Today's Fashion & Style section came out with articles on how rich daughters of rich people are competing at the Hampton Classic, a rich horse show in the rich Hamptons; how some older women are running faster than younger ones; how some states are "cracking" down on baggy, below-the-butt jeans; and how older women are letting their hair be naturally gray. Might as well call the section Age & Money.

The one article that cheered me up was Alex Kuczynski's breezy, droll piece about shopping at Bloomingdale's Soho with various younger relatives. The price tags of everything they seem to linger over (always with enough time for his cousin Clare to make a funny, knowing comment -- I love that device myself) are ridiculously, Manhattaning-ly high. But still, when Clare sneers that flats and short skirts are all about female disempowerment -- they make girls look more vulnerable, therefore less threatening, to men (and also make girls look like ducks, a species that is certainly not usually perceived by men to be threatening) -- I had to laugh.

I think my own cousin, who refuses to let me use her name, is far more entertaining, though right now she's on vacation with her family and is probably sulking in the back of a cafe or glaring at the tourists (she's never a tourist and never will be, she swears). But Alex got me with his memories of back-to-school shopping: "Mom and Mr. Inseam poking their heads into the dressing room." The dark halls of Bloomingdale's uptown (which he aptly calls the grandmother, if Bloomingdale's Soho is the granddaughter) were the site of many tween humiliations for me too. There was that time I realized nothing fit, for instance. And all those other times. Ironically, to compensate for feeling too fat to buy anything (I wasn't, but I was no twig), we'd go to Serendipity IIIfor ice cream sundaes, served by the fabulously fey, glorious waiters still tan from their '70s wildings on Fire Island. It was marvelous. Between the Tiffany lamps and butterflies looming overhead, the hot fudge, the breadsticks, and the general disco-afternoon happiness of the place, I'd forget all about those stupid straight- leg Levi's that nipped meanly at my upper thighs.

It felt very Manhattan, actually, to be thumbing through the newspaper and chuckling to myself; very out of place up here in the woods. And so at the table right next to me, there glared the local fashionistas: peasant blouses, no doubt made of hemp designer jeans (better be Loomstate, honies); honey-and-salt-pedicured feet in silver Birkenstock Gizehs. I had a moment of acutely missing that very city I'd fled, if only to be among the darker-cladded, newspaper-reading flocks. To be in a place where it's a survival tactic to actively ignore, rather than sneer at, other people.

In a few days, though, the entire island's going to be fixed in a sneer or a swoon, depending. Fashion Week is coming. The insane flashy enormity of it, the uber-inner-inner-circles of it, the fashionistic hysterical wizardry of it. As much as I may smirk at a silly concept (no, I will not say Fornarina high-waisted trousers as hip-blowing as zoot pants are cool, I will not I will not, though the high-waisted skirt, which looks like a sawed-off trenchcoat, now that's fun), I love fashion for all its Oscar Wilde frivolity; a white-gloved wave of the hand masking a terrible sense of inner despair.

Were it not for certain sweaters and corduroys in my childhood, I could not have withstood those over-painful first months of new schools (we moved a lot). But all I had to do was look down, see the wide wale in homey, delicious chestnut, and match it to the leaves shimmering on the oaks outside the window, and I was at peace. Even the most raucous bang-on-the-technicolor-drum-clown mavens have that same feeling. Now if we can only extend it to one another, like The Sartorialist, as civil and cordial as an old button-down shirt, does. Hope we see him there.

Jana Martin is The MOLI View's contributing editor for Fashion & Design.