People can get pretty hot under the collar about down jackets – who knew a coat could be so polarizing?
Some people love them when it’s cold outside, while others see them as a definite fashion no-no, saying they make wearers look shapeless at best.
They have even been compared to SUVs, with critics arguing people who live in cities need not dress as though they are heading out on a polar expedition.
“People in pedestrian zones are dressing as though they want to climb Everest tomorrow,” German mountaineer Reinhold Messner once told dpa.
‘Walking sleeping bags’
Some make their point with even more powerful words. “Invasion of the Michelin men” was a headline in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper this winter, in an article denigrating the craze for down jackets, describing them as “walking sleeping bags, quilts and pillows.”
That echoed an earlier article in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “Everyone is wearing huge quilted coats and Arctic jackets, as if the Coen brothers were planning to remake the film ‘Fargo’.” Only Frances McDormand looks good dressed for an expedition, the paper said.
Even the NZZ newspaper in Switzerland once slammed wearers of down jackets in an affluent area around Zurich: “Anyone who occasionally spends time on wealthy lake shores can observe the desertification of entire population groups.”
High fashion?
But they are popular among trendsetters, too. Take German supermodel Heidi Klum, who was spotted in the upmarket ski resort of Aspen, Colorado, clad in a particularly voluminous down jacket with a quilted look and braided pattern.
That is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the past few years, the fashion for extra thick clothing has grown steadily, even amid mild winters.
“It’s relatively unusual for a fashion trend to last this long,” says Anna Sophie Müller, lecturer in textiles and fashion at the Europa-Universität Flensburg, in Germany.
The fashion is diversifying with new styles and individual items. The chunky-looking jackets, like any trendy garment, have a social function and work as a “vestimentary code that is used to communicate in the social sphere,” she says.
“What exactly this entails depends on the scene, the youth or subculture,” says Müller. One characteristic feature of fashion is “the self-evident nature of paradoxes.”
That means, it is “impossible to name the one meaning of this trend. To find out, you would have to ask people, carry out a field study and find out exactly what the fashion function is.”
Not green
As a scientist, Müller also takes a critical look at trends from an ecological perspective. “We need to reduce our high consumption of resources,” she says.
A world without fashion – with clothing that offers purely functional protection, covers people so they do not feel naked and adorns the body – would probably be helpful, but the idea is utopian, she says.
Ask people wearing the jackets out on the streets, meanwhile, and you get answers like, “It’s such a feel-good thing.” Or, “It’s about keeping out the cold, it also helps me mentally, if I cover myself with lots of fabric for protection,” says a woman in her mid-forties in Berlin.
Another calls her down jacket – though many are enhanced with synthetic materials – a game changer. “I love my coat, I’ve never felt really frozen in it – unlike in the past,” says the Bremen-born woman.
“No other coat can compete. Since I’ve had it, I enjoy going outdoors for long periods of time, even in winter.”
