Published Jan. 28, 2007 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune

Real winter leaves fashion in the cold

By Aaron J. Brown

Even in abnormal winters amid global climate change, one thing remains certain where we live. It is cold now, colder than it is most places and much colder than it was six months ago. We Northern Minnesotans are a winter people. You can talk global warming, and I believe you, but I’m wearing a coat today and will tomorrow, too.

We are enamored with the parts of our country that do not experience traditional winters: southern California, Hawaii, Florida, Arizona and the like. But I am always intrigued by the places where winter is a passing fad, like Christmas decorations or an ill-advised Fu Manchu mustache. Some places get one good snow, a couple cold blasts and that’s it. They’re talking about spring time long before we’re done shoveling or shivering. One such place, New York, is the center of much of our news media and the domestic fashion industry. The result is winter fashion trends that would never hold up in places where winter is more of a six-month interloper than an overnight guest.

I refer in particular to the national morning network shows like “Today,” “Good Morning America,” and “The Early Show.” If pop culture and fashion were a digestive tract, these shows would be the sphincter. No, not that sphincter, the one off your stomach (not that it matters, I’m only trying to maintain the integrity of my metaphor). All three of these shows are based in New York and all have featured winter fashion tips that would last all of thirty seconds on an average January day in northern Minnesota.

For instance, take the trend of fluffy collars and cuffs on women’s (and some men’s) coats. My wife calls them porn bunny coats, which is funny but for reasons that are unclear. If you actually wore these things snowmobiling or ice fishing, you would be a very attractive, well dressed corpse. That is, if search and rescue found you before the coyotes. Otherwise you’d be a giant, ornate tube steak.

Periodically, big puffy coats, caps and scarves will drift in and out of style, but only at the whim of paper-thin East Coast designers who subsist on a sick pleasure in what they can convince people to wear. I bet they don’t look at the forecast for Northern Minnesota, or as the smug national weather people call us, the Upper Mississippi Valley.

I’ve noticed that as people get older they become less interested in looking good in the winter and more interested in surviving the winter. Drive by any local high school in the morning and you will see many cold teens attempting high fashion. Meantime, across town at the senior center you’ll hear old men in big parkas talking about getting just one more good summer.

In this regard, I like to think I was ahead of the curve. Since high school I’ve worn a flapped winter hat, something some would call an Elmer Fudd hat, and have always been drawn to long winter coats that keep the wind off my legs. When temperatures dip, the flaps go down, the coat buttons tight and I am reasonably confident I won’t have to start a fire to survive.

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