Under wraps
File this under bizarre behavior: a college classmate was shivering beside me thanks to the cold drafts emanating from the industrial air conditioner directly above us during one of those interminable lectures theology professors are prone to dispensing right after lunch when all you want to do is curl up in the corner and nap.
“Why not put on a sweater?” I asked classmate concernedly. She was the leggy, pretty sort. The kind of girl all the guys drooled over in school. And she was dressed in a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top. Not exactly practical attire for the slushy, muddy weather we’d been experiencing that cold October.
“I’m OK,” she said nonchalantly. Well, as nonchalant as one can be with shivering limbs and chattering teeth. Turns out she (let’s just refer to her as “classmate” from now on) had a rather peculiar reason for skipping the outerwear on a cold day. Whenever you feel cold, she explained to me one day over lunch (I was stuffing my face with two orders of dimsum and a Wendy’s Frosty for desert while she dined on bits of granola and lemon-flavored water), your body burns calories as it tries to keep you warm.
“Huh?” I said rather eloquently, starting to feel guilty about my current calorie intake while classmate, all 100 pounds of her, nibbled on what appeared to be leaves from a nearby tree.
Instead of investing in jackets or sweaters, she preferred to suffer the cold in the hopes that her insides would feed on her fat. While the notion sounded more than a little nuts to me, I might’ve been wrong. That year classmate bagged two TV commercials and the adoration of half the school.
But it occurred to me, as I rifled through racks of jackets and sweaters in shops with ample relief from the rainy season’s cold mood swings, that classmate was missing out. She doesn’t get to shrug into a cozy sweater while waiting for her perennially tardy friends to show up for coffee at some hole-in-the-wall café. Instead of suiting up for that power meeting, she resists the urge to cover up and makes do with a blouse.
This season’s cover-ups — and there are plenty to choose from — have an irresistible allure. YStyle’s covered all the bases, from utilitarian coats, sweet peplum-trimmed jackets, sophisticated parkas (who knew such a thing existed?) and fitted blazers.
My point — and I'm sorry it took me so long to get to it — is that, thanks to Manila’s two-season weather, the joy of shopping in prepation for the coming cooler months is part of what makes sweater-shopping a big deal. After all, once you've spent most of the year in flip-flops and gossamer-thin tees, a change in weather marks the beginning of brand-new wardrobe.
Remembering classmate while in the process of putting this editorial together seemed providential. She had recently cropped up as a topic of conversation during a dinner held by a friend who was hying off to the hinterlands of
“I wonder whatever happened to her,” my friend mused as we dined on grilled
“Well,” I murmured between bites, “wherever she is, she must be awfully cold.” I paused thoughtfully. ”And thin.”
