As menswear labels continue to pillage their "archives" for ideas and fashion continues its current obsession with all things "heritage", it's easy to forget one simple fact: winter's coming and you really don't want to face it dressed like George Mallory setting off to climb Everest, which you will if you bought into the whole Happy Hiker look and are still tucking your trousers into your socks.
Dressed like that, even setting off to climb the hill to the bus stop will prove problematic in inclement weather. You may find, for instance, that your expensive boots aren’t quite as water-repellent as they looked in the GQ fashion shoot; that yes, your gloves are tres chic, but being fingerless they are also tres chilly; that simply turning up the collar on your tweed overcoat won’t keep the snow from going down your neck.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against fashion boots or fingerless gloves and certainly nothing against tweed. But when it’s me against those of the elements which give you frostbite, make your socks go soggy and blow your deerstalker into the road, I want man-made fibres on my side – and my front, back, head, feet and any other exposed surfaces I haven’t mentioned. I want zips, not buttons. I want hoods, not just collars. At my wrists I want elastic, not artfully designed sleeves that are a little too short and have cuffs that let cold air in. I want neoprene, not selvedge, nylon not twill or cord.
I’m serious: if winters were movies, we’ve already had White Hell and Return Of White Hell and are gearing up for White Hell III: It’s Come For Your Gas Bill. We need to dress appropriately.
Now your basic sensible winter kit is this: wellies, long johns, fleece, gloves, woolly hat and, as your final outer layer, something in lurid-coloured GoreTex. In fashion terms the wellies are more or less OK, thanks to the sterling efforts of celebrities who wear them at rock festivals. Ditto long johns, as we learned recently when we discussed David Beckham’s foray into thermal underwear. But the rest of it, well, if it ever was orbiting Planet Fashion it has now done a slingshot around it and is heading into deep space where it will collide with Planet Boris Johnson in a decade or so.
Worry not, though. You see the great thing about menswear is that it has not one but two default settings and they both cope rather well with cold weather. One is sports gear, the other is military/naval garb. Which means parkas, quilted skiing jackets, padded gilets, bobble hats, duffle coats and, yes, even those men’s Ugg boots are perfectly acceptable as we head into winter.
When the going gets tough, the sartorially alert can still wrap up sensibly. n
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