5 Reasons How Winter has Taught Midwest Girls the Art of Dressing

Welcome to January everyone! And although we’ve lucked out weather-wise so far this winter, we all know it’s coming. Cold air, wind gusts and what would winter be without the snow? And more snow. And then after that snow, a few more inches just for kicks and giggles.

To be fair, I actually like the snow because, as any Midwesterner knows….winter is pretty ugly. Everything is dead. Trees, grass, bushes, actually, the Midwest in the winter would be a perfect location for a horror movie. Which is why I like the snow….everything is still dead but at least it’s pretty.

But I digress. Back to winter whose qualities have definitely helped all of us in the “flyover states” actually become undoubtedly good dressers, even without trying. And having lived somewhere in Northern Indiana my whole life, I think I bring quite a bit of knowledge to the subject.

We Understand How to Layer

Reason number 1? We get layering. Like for real, it’s pretty natural to us and apparently, it’s not for the rest of the world. I mean, a simple Google search will tell you. Go ahead, Google, “how to layer.” I just did and my search yielded 518 million (that’s million….with an M) results. The top article should be titled, “How to Layer - Move to the Midwest in Winter,” but it’s not. Instead it’s post after post literally teaching people how to layer their clothing.

For those of us in the Midwest, we learned this trick pretty early in life. Kinda like being thrown to the wolves. We learn for 2 reasons - number one, in late fall and early spring, we usually have multiple days that somehow hit all 4 seasons in between the times we leave for work and the time we get home. It’s an odd phenomena, but that’s the Midwest, and we adjust by, you guessed it, layering.

Reason number two? Well, winters are cold as shit. Sorry for the swear word, but there really is no other way to describe winter. I’ve literally been looking at my screen for 5 minutes trying to come up with a better word or analogy and I couldn’t. They’re just cold. And don’t get me started about the windchill, which makes it even worse.

Needless to say, we layer because if we didn’t, we’d all freeze to death.

It’s Always Boot Season in the Midwest

Yep, you read that right, here in the Midwest, boots don’t have an off-season. In some parts of the country, women go crazy for fall because it’s officially boot season. Here in the Midwest however, every season is boot season! Now sometimes our boots might just be our “outside boots,” or our “chore boots,” but trust me, we all own boots, probably multiple pair, that were purchased in the winter months but worn primarily in spring and summer. I mean, can you even go to the county fair if you’re not wearing boots? See this IG pic for proof, and don’t worry, no small vehicles were actually stolen for this shot:)

We Layer to Stay Warm, But Also So We can Go Coat-less

I think we actually develop a winter skin. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s still cold, but there are moments when we somehow can actually not wear a coat. It’s probably in the car (you know, in case it breaks down or we get stuck) but with all of those layers, we can somehow make it from the car to the ________. You can insert a variety of things - restaurant, gym (not the kind where you work out, the kind where basketball is played), gym (the kind where you work out), theater, store, bar….Literally wherever it is we don’t want to carry our coats because they’re bulky and we don’t have room for them.

Also, sometimes our sweaters are oversized making coats super uncomfortable, but that winter skin makes it so we don’t have to sacrifice our comfort and style for warmth. Not that we’re warm, when coat-less, but we can tolerate the cold at least for a few minutes.

Shoes for Icy Conditions

Slippery conditions aren’t that big of a deal, they’re just annoying. Not only can we drive through snow and ice, we somehow can walk on it. Even in cute shoes. I know in some states everything closes down when there’s a little snow or ice, but for us, we’d all have a really long vacation if that were the case. That said, we have an innate talent to pick out super cute shoes that are still fine to trek through the snow and ice. BUT, for those days or nights when only our very cutest heels will do, it’s all good, we can still manage to walk through the treacherous conditions wearing them.

Outfits for Six Seasons

Here in the Midwest, we get to dress for everything - you name it, we have it. Heat and humidity in the summer, plus the above mentioned snow, wind and ice in the winter. Basically we have clothes in our closets for each of the extremes and then everything in between and we have to know how to wear them. And mix them, because we actually have seasons in between the seasons.

For instance, wing, which is a mix of winter and spring and sall, between summer and fall. You might think, what about “finter,” clearly some sort of fall/winter combo, but we don’t have that. Actually “sall” is probably our fall, and then usually, we get about eight hours of actual autumn, then, it’s just winter. Anyway, my point is that sometimes we wear sandals, shorts and tanks, but the season of sall calls for us to add a cute cardi and switch the sandals to our favorite winter booties.

What season do you love dressing for most? LMK in the comments below!