Dressing Canadian

OK winter, we get it. How many Snow-pocalypses, Snow-mageddons, Snow-locausts have there been already? Seems like with every hint of flurries entire cities’ infrastructures grind to a halt and people forget how to arm themselves against the elements, throwing on whatever they have lying around their apartments. Sure, swaddling yourself in quilts seems OK until you have to go somewhere other people are gathered. And yeah, why not wear those moccasins you got off eBay, they were made for this kind of weather for people who made them in this kind of weather, right? Plus, who needs a functional winter coat when you have six vintage leather jackets? Get your heads out of your asses. You’re doing it wrong.

Since we just put out our yearly Fashion issue, we figured this is a good time to give you a Canadian reminder in dressing for winter the way our forefathers did it: by taking the finest winter fabrics from our native land and layering them on like a club sandwich. It’s time to learn how to dress Canadian.

Denim

There’s a reason it’s called a “Canadian Tuxedo” and it’s not just because a lot of us are rednecks. Whether it’s selvedge denim (just kidding, we don’t even know how to pronounce that) or traded from a trucker in-turn for your dignity, a denim shirt is like a soft layer of goose-down when you can’t afford goose-down. Double Denim is so signature Canadian that anyone else wearing it is automatically a poser.

Knits

There’s nothing quite like wearing a ten pound sweater covered in semi-unrecognizable knitted brown figures of salmon or eagles or bears. These are the knits that have been battered by just about everyone in your lineage and have still made it all the way down to you. They can stand up on their own and the smell of them alone adds another layer against the cold. It’s true our fore-fathers are best known for trapping, but our fore-moms were so bored they became world-renowned knitters. You always know the true Canadian versions though because these knits are off-beige due to not being washed in 25 years and have a comforting smell of moth balls and firewood.

Fur

Who do you think were the first ones to go gallivanting about in their Sunday furs? Us! We were! And just like that Morrissey song, every day WAS like Sunday because we had head to toe outfits made from the stuff. What else do you expect from people who rode the backs of wolverines to work? There were so many minks everyone had a mink coat for their pet mink. Nowadays fur is so popular that it costs an arm and a leg, when back in the olden times all it cost was the arm and the leg of that coyote you tracked down, caught, skinned, wore, ate, and built a fort out of for your grand kids. Rich, poor, everyone had seven-day ensembles made from the fuzzy skins of dead animals.

Snowpants

From a very young age all Canadian children are issued these and wear them from about Halloween straight through May. Not only do they keep all the moisture out of your drawers and are big enough to cover seven pairs of sweat pants, later on they make getting drunk and tobogganing on a piece of plywood down a blizzardy hill much more tolerable. And since tobogganing is the Canadian equivalent of surfing, snow pants are a big deal.

Long-johns

Long johns are the finest insulation ever created for anyone who has lived through a -45 day. They are like a second layer of greasy, sweaty skin. Long before the Norwegians fucked them up with these monstrosities, lazy Canadians figured out that having a butt-flap means you don’t even need to take off all your clothes to drop a deuce. It’s like the Canadian cloaca.

Gloves

Your hands need coats too. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten around to adapting to texting, checking if fruit is ripe, counting out exact change, picking up things smaller than a VCR, or romantically touching someone’s face while wearing clumsy woolen bags on our hands.

Flannels

Before they got annoying they were ours. We invented these. Or the people who invented us invented these, so we call dibs. The patterns are old time Tartans which were basically gang colours for people who had poor dental hygiene and roamed the medieval countryside. They could identify each other based on who had that tiny extra green stripe versus those with two green stripes and the dotted red stripe. Needless to say everyone was getting killed so it didn’t really matter. Aside from the fact that these may be the single unifying garment that all Canadians share regardless of geography, age bracket, or musical taste, they were made first and foremost to keep us warm and retain the smell of cedar-smoke, maple syrup, Canadian bacon (or as we call it: ham), all year round.

Boots

Critical. What are you wearing around, chucks? Some kind of tall leather boot with so many layers of salt stains your shoes look like an archaeological excavation? Soggy and cold feet are the first sign of a big bummer and getting nothing done. Sorels are the heavyweights up here. They were named after the little Northern Quebec town they came from where people chopped down trees 72 hours a day.

PHOTOS: KAVIN WONG

Special thanks to PKG, Penny Arcade.

Models: Patrick McGuire, Vanessa Handford