I am headed out to see my friend Matt Tyrnauer’s amazing documentary, “Valentino: The Last Emperor,” at its New York premiere. Per the invitation, I am bringing a pug and a G5 pilot. Reports soon! Ciao, dahlings! XO

Everyone knows that just about anything that can be experienced is experienced more acutely in New York City. But I massively disagree with New York Magazine’s Hugo Lindgren who asserts that “New York feels so much gloomier than the rest of the country,” despite the widespread crappiness of the economy. Now, I admit my economics haven’t changed all that much. But I don’t live in a bubble: Mr. MILF is a stressed-out finance guy who receives several job-termination emails per week from laid-off friends and colleagues. Even so, contrary to what a lot of visitors have started saying about the city, here on the seriously unhip Upper West Side, life looks normal. Broadway bustles with strollers, crime is a non-issue and empty storefronts are the exception. Contrast that to my hometown in tony suburban Detroit, where most commercial buildings have displayed “For Rent” or “For Sale” signs for years and where stable two- and three-generation neighborhoods are plagued by the chaos of foreclosures and abandoned mortgages. In New York, if some unlucky soul must leave her home, the opacity of apartment buildings, not to mention the general anonymity of big-city living, prevents the news from going public. The mere physical absence of for-sale and foreclosure signs protects the collective psyche, and allows New Yorkers the psychological space to hope. Detroiters, and the country’s many more suburbanites, are suffocating from the surfeit of sad-sack signage — because it’s not just symbolism.

If I were a fashion cynic — and the good Golden Calf knows, I often feel certain designers are bent on making me one — then I would assume that the current Afrophilia was a big joke on consumers by the many designers who feel so betrayed these days. The joke being, “If you people are going to be all wah-fuckin’-wah about your new poorhouse economics and cease the mindless consumerism that has made us filthy rich, then we’re going to dress you like the poorest people on the planet while telling you you’re so chic — as we laugh our way to the bank (again).” But I’m not a fashion cynic. Call me crazy, but I really, truly believe that — excepting, cough-cough, Miuccia Prada, cough-cough — the happy prints and vibrant colors of Africa are a natural response to dark days such as these. And when said designs come from a new designer doing a very literal interpretation with vintage Kenyan kangas collected over the course of a decade — without, even, a clear idea of what to do with all that material, until last year — then you know you’ve stumbled upon something genuine. That Suno’s lookbook pictures look like technicolor updates of Malik Sibide portraiture only adds to the allure.

www.suno.com via SheBreathes. Coming soon to Opening Ceremony.