Winter fashionwear

I drove through a blizzard and an ice storm and am lived to tell the tale. Above is an artists wedding from a number of years ago, the bride is on the right. The marriage was, however, never consummated, due to an equipment failure.

One artist on the trip was surprised to find out how many layers of clothing some of us were wearing. We were all sitting around and counting how many layers of clothing we had on. Layering is the trick to staying warm when painting outside. T.M. on the right, said he had on eight layers of clothing . I am marching along in my handsome new pantsuit on the right. I have on a set of Cabela's polar weight long underwear, a shirt, bluejeans, the pantsuit, a heavy plaid fleece jacket, a down vest and three hats.

Over top of that I have an arctic weight jacket. That weighs about five pounds it has so much insulation in it. The hats are a brimmed baseball cap, a "Turtlefur" ( a proprietary synthetic) hat and the peculiarly warm orange stocking cap that looks so good on me. I am wearing a pair of ski gloves with a chemical handwarmer packet in each.


Here is Suzy wearing an overall style work suit. When she paints she adds a jacket to the ensemble. The hat has special ears, I don't know exactly why. I have no idea what she has on underneath. Notice the boots on the guy to the right of her, those are the Cabela's trans Alaskas. T.M. is wearing a Carhart winter insulated worksuit with all those layers beneath. As I said yesterday, it was 13 degrees below zero when this shot was taken.

Lucia is modeling a more restrained outfit with snowboard style pants and lots of layers underneath. She is actually a rather small person, but all of those clothes give her a stylish and enlarged appearance. There are lots of modern synthetics that are really warm, Polar fleece and underarmor to name a few. Any outdoor shop can sell you lots of different varieties, even Walmart has a selection. They don't need to be expensive or fancy to work well. My orange hat cost three dollars and is the warmest hat I have ever owned, other than a bomber hat.


Here is Barrett wearing a set of insulated overalls and a bomber hat. Those are real good when there is a wind, the flaps protect your face from freezing, somewhat.

Here are a pair of the Cabelas "superboots" modeled by the lovely Lucia.

It is possible to be completely comfortable if you have enough layers on and good boots, providing you are out of the wind. The wind will freeze any exposed flesh and put you out of business, so you have to set up facing away from it, or paint down in the woods or in the lee of a building for shelter.