When you live in Chicago and have to walk any distance to get to work, you learn how to dress appropriately. Fashion definitely takes a back seat to warmth, so I have different levels of dress, depending upon how low the temperature goes.
When we start talking wind chill factors, the woolen coat goes back in the closet and the LL Bean insulated coat with a hood comes out. I've often told the story of how, one day last winter, I was ridiculed by a complete stranger for my appearance. First of all, each day I walk from Union Station to State and Congress - about a mile. On this particularly cold day, I was wearing my LL Bean coat, which almost reaches my ankles. I had on a hat under the hood, gloves and sunglasses (no matter the cloudiness, they help prevent my eyes from tearing up in the wind) and of course, my Uggs.
The LL Bean had a faux fur trim on the hood. Once I velcroed and zipped myself into the coat, there was a rather small opening so I could see where I was going. The sunglasses provided the last bit of disguise and only my Italian nose was really visible. As I made my way east on Jackson, a man going west stopped dead in his tracks and pointed at me, from about ten feet away. He was laughing as he pointed, saying very loudly, "I can still see you in there!"
Right in the middle of the busy sidewalk in the Loop at 8:30 in the morning.
How hysterical.
I quickened my pace past this moron and darted into a building on the southeast corner of Jackson and Wells, my only block-long cut-through on my way to work. As I relished the temporary relief from the cold, I recovered from the insult, thinking, "At least I'm warm." The other consolation I took was that in my cold weather get-up, no one could recognize me.
The older I get, the more frustrated I become about fashion. At the risk of sounding like an old lady, I can't believe how so many professional women are foregoing pantyhose and working bare-legged in the middle of winter. Granted, most of them are a lot younger than I am, but this style seems so uncomfortable to me, if only from the aspect of having bare feet in high heels. To me, that equals blisters and your soles sticking to the inside of your shoes - yuck.
I have a number of friends from high school and college who now live in Arizona. This mode of fashion is second nature to them, but then again, they don't have to worry about snow in their shoes or stepping in a five-inch deep puddle of icy slush at a street corner. I have another friend who spent ten years living in Alaska. She thinks those years were a breeze compared to the bone-chilling, damp cold in Chi-town.
Well, despite the near frostbite I experienced on my shnozz this morning, I think I'm ok with our annual deep freeze. Not that I love the cold by any means, but it beats hot flashes in the middle of July and it also gives me something else to "wear" every day - my frosty badge of courage and strength for making it through another Chicago winter.
1 comment:
Spoken like a true Chicagoan!
P.S. - How dare he!
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