DITCH YOUR BOYFRIEND’S LETTERMAN JACKET—WEAR YOUR MOM’S FUR COAT!
There is a certain kind of novelty associated with snagging a garment that doesn’t belong to you as a sign of admiration and connection. Dewy grass blades and crunching over autumn leaves in your hometown after the high school football team won by enough touchdowns to relax your legs when you sit on the bleachers, no anxiety of loss on the horizon.
Wearing the jacket of your lover embodies the transfer of warmth and cover, perhaps even harboring pieces of their smell to overlay your own. Many fantasize of the oversized nature in which the coat seems almost to swallow you whole, leaving you appearing nimble and frail beneath your hulking man! These daydreams are outdated, overrated, and must be substituted with something of real class: pick up your mother’s fur coat. You know, the one hanging in the back of her closet behind the chevron scarves and gaudy mint green jewels. What you will find is a relic of glamour, a piece that outlasted trends, boyfriends, and small-town victories. Borrowed letterman jackets come with borrowed adolescence, while the fur coat whispers of history and audacity of the women who stepped out on the town before you. There is an awkwardness in embracing womanhood, especially when it feels like a bold statement. Now, more than ever, there is a clear interest of wearing vintage clothing over what is brand new. It appears that people prefer to play it safe, sticking for dainty slip dresses and baggy Levi’s jeans. The fur coat is mistakenly shied away from. Slip into it and you are no longer someone’s girlfriend or appendage. You are an heiress of extravagance, clocked into matrilineal power. A letterman jacket tells a story of Friday night lights and soda fountains; a fur coat tells a story of martinis at noon and rooms where women were seen, heard, and remembered. In this coat you will not shrink beneath the bulk of another, rather you can expand into your own silhouette. The first time I ever touched my mother’s clothing, I stood in the mirror and craned my head to the side. It felt as though her clothes wore me and I became the young girl playing dress-up in her closet with blue eyeshadow smeared across my face. It seemed impossible to take myself seriously wearing something that felt so out of place on my own body. This isn’t about fur.
There is a performance of authority and taste. The fur coat is an archival; It carries her perfume, the smudge of lipstick on the collar, and echoes of a night you weren’t alive to witness. When you wear it, you are not consumed by someone else’s ego, but layered in the authority of women who dress to be remembered rather than adored. While a boyfriend’s jacket is proof of belonging to a boy, the fur coat is proof that you already belong to a legacy. There is a beautiful feeling of maternal connection when you split bar tabs and dance the night away in a coat that has heard generations of music. These pieces become important to you, giving you candid insight of where you came from and who your mother was. There is also the matter of scale. A letterman jacket is oversized in a way that infantilizes. The tiny girl swallowed up by the boy’s sleeves is the pinnacle of every nostalgic star-crossed lovers movie. The volume of a fur coat, on the other hand, is meant to command rather than appear as fragile. You are no longer playing dress up in someone else’s world. Excess has always been coded feminine in the best possible way. Sequins, lacquered nails, handbags that fit nothing but lipsticks are ways in which women have long turned surplus into a spectacle. A fur coat is the fullest expression of that practice: it refuses minimalism, subtlety, or disappearing. A mother’s fur coat stands as a weapon of the quick cycles of fashion rotating in and out of the landfill. Your mother’s coat will last you forever, while the boyfriend’s hoodie will end up in the trash bag set for Goodwill that ends up spending seven months in the backseat of your car instead. Letterman jackets belong to the mythology of boyhood and conquest. They are tied to a specific version of American youth that we don’t have to idealize anymore.
The fur coat is unmoored by the school yard. It might feel absurd at first when you put it on. The sleeves are too long, the shoulders are too square, and the fur continuously brushes your chin like an affectionate animal. Real magic begins when you step into the feeling of “too much” and embrace the gifts it will provide you. Don’t get me wrong, there is no harm in preferring the letterman your heart may desire a time or two, but if you’re sick of waiting on the bleacher for kisses, pull your mother’s fur coat from the garment bag and recognize it for the declaration that it is. Turn your softness into a spectacle. The letterman was borrowed, but the coat is already yours.
