Beanies and gloves. Two accessories that, historically, were requisite items for the respectable citizen.
The glove, it’s been said, was first mentioned in writing as the thing worn by Pliny the Younger to keep the fingers nimble in cold weather while working for Pliny the Elder. Like the bicycle, the glove has evolved very little since the dawn of whatever day it was first used. What has evolved is the work we do when wearing said accessory; it’s the way we wear them as well as the “why” that’s different.
Yes, it’s cold, but are we downhill skiing or are we at a disco in Norway? Is Dior’s sharkskin gray accompanying us from cab to basement soirée or is HERON PRESTON leading us by the finger on the back of a motorbike? Is the glove in hand or is it off? (Does anyone throw a glove at the feet of a rival anymore? Unlikely, but what an elegant gesture.) These days, the glove is the proverbial cherry on the proverbial layered cake of winter-wear. It’s the splash of color, the statement adjective, the terminal punctuation that takes the phrase of an ensemble from fine to great.
And then there’s the winter hat. It wasn’t so long ago that a hat was a necessity, period. In the US, the first president to go without a top hat was Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1965 (and not Jimmy Carter or JFK, as urban legend suggests), breaking with a longstanding tradition. In so doing, he helped to de-link the hat and the formal occasion.
A hat was once worn at a specific angle; it changed a person’s height and signaled their situation in society. From the Derby’s fascinator to the standard fedora, a hat telegraphed someone’s stance toward contemporary fashion like almost nothing else. But the seamed cap, aka the beanie aka the toboggan (Midwest) aka the bennie (UK) aka the watch cap, the skully, or
die pudelmütze (Germany), has almost always signaled utility. To wear a beanie is to be both supremely practical and, now, instantly recognized as either on- or off-trend. Because no matter what you’ve got on your feet, it’s the head they’ll see first, and whatever brand-name is emblazoned across it.
