Hello, sweet readers! I hope you are all keeping yourselves warm and cozy, especially as we weather this “polar vortex”, which sounds way cooler (metaphorically) than it’s been. And in case anyone is reading from Australia, hope you’re keeping cool, and would you like to trade places? 🙂
Now I expect that being in Canada, winter will be cold and snowy and, well, wintery. However, usually I can get by with the Toronto downtown uniform of a nice wool coat, scarf, and boots (and sometimes gloves). Usually I can wear a skirt or dress to work, with nylons of course, nothing too alarming or bitingly cold. Basically usually I head outside looking like this:
And after receiving a lovely coat for Christmas from Nick’s parents, the late holidays into early 2014 looked like this:
However, neither of those would stand up to the temperatures we’ve had recently. They are warm, and work well, but once you get below about -15 they start to be insufficient, even with piled on layers. Time to call in the heavy duty stuff. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the puffy style of coat, since it reminds me a bit too much of snowsuits. For me, it meant pulling out my precious Danier long leather coat. It’s an amazing soft leather (lambskin, I think?) in a red wine colour, and it’s stood up to the coldest winters I’ve ever had to deal with, while still being flattering! This one is a few years old, maybe purchased in 2008, but a good leather coat is timeless. I saw similar styles brand-new from about $300, so this would definitely be an investment piece. Towards the beginning of this deep chill, I simply swapped coats, and I’d be on my way:
… And then the temperatures decided to plummet further, much much further. At that point it was time to pull out hats, scarves, the whole deal. I took a page out of Nick’s book, and layered a couple of scarves as well for extra warmth. I basically ended up looking like this, which I think is still cute:
And here, for laughs, is the picture of how I headed outside in the dire temps.
Happily, it looks like the vortex is slowly going to ease up. In the meantime, bundle up, dear friends! And evenings curled up in cozy pajamas with a hot cup of tea or hot chocolate (or mulled wine!) should be just the fix!
How are you weathering the polar vortex? Or has your area escaped the cold wrath of this phenomenon?
Dash of Pink 