Allow me to paint you a picture. At this very moment I am sitting in my home office in my Sydney flat, wearing a skivvy, heavy jumper, woollen tights and ugg boots, with the heater blowing directly at my face and a wheat pack on my lap. Why? Because I’m slightly shabby from a night on the Negronis and nobody is around to point and laugh at me. Why else? BECAUSE IT’S FREAKING COLD!
Yes, it’s true, much to the disbelief and chagrin of the masses, even sunny Sydney gets cold in winter. Obviously by comparison to cities such as New York, London, Moscow, even Melbourne, temperatures here can be considered positively balmy even in the dead of July. But it’s all relative isn’t it? I am here now. I am (sadly) not in New York. And I am FREEZING!
And yet every year around this time, as temperatures dip well below tshirt weather, Sydneysiders seem genuinely shocked they are not living in the tropics/Summer Bay. All over town, from Bondi to Baulkham Hills (the lesser known Paul Kelly song), exclamations of “It’s never been THIS cold before” and “It must be that climate change thing they keep talking about on the news” can be heard spewing forth from the mouths of (scantily clad) babes.
The problem it seems is that many Sydney women just don’t know how to dress appropriately for winter. These ladies tend to fit into one of two camps – the ridiculously overdressed and the chronically underdressed. The former group can be seen getting about in heavy layer upon unflattering heavy layer of usually topped off with a coat more suited to an Arctic adventure than a day out in Darlinghurst; while the latter gad about in short shorts and tshirts with MAYBE a scarf OR a beanie to warm their chattering bones.
It is this latter group I want to talk about. Predominantly made up of - but not restricted to – young women of I’d say 25 years and under, members of the fold seem to be of the misguided opinion that one cannot be stylish or sexy without showing at least 75% of one’s usually spray tanned skin. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m as taken with a set of bare pins and/or an exposed décolletage as the next gal, but when it’s 12 degrees outside the sight of naked flesh on somebody else just makes me even colder.
I get it. I was 25 years and under once too. In fact just last night my best friend and I were reminiscing about our long lost youth, when we eschewed the conventions of society (and our horrified mothers) and left the house throughout winter in miniskirts and halter tops with neither coats nor tights to warm our ludicrously underdressed – and for the most part underage - bodies. It’s a miracle we never got pneumonia. Or arrested.
Since then we have learned that skin does not directly equate to style. And winter now sees us getting about in seasonally appropriate apparel that may or may not include a hint of flesh here and there (we’re chilly, not Amish). In fact personally the Autumn/Winter fashion season has become my favourite, obsessed as I am with all things woollen and drapey. I get positively tingly at the first hint of a nip in the air, and immediately begin trolling the web for the perfect winter cape*.
So maybe there’s hope for these bare naked ladies after all. Perhaps when they hit the dreaded over-25 mark they will throw caution to the wind and buy themselves a tailored trench and a few sets of 70 denier opaques. Because apparently with age comes coats. And in my case turtlenecks.
*I have five.
Source: The Vine
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