As the northern hemisphere plunges into wintery weather, it is finally an appropriate time to fully rotate our wardrobe to our warm clothes. However, the transition from summer clothes to the usual autumn and winter wardrobes seems to be delayed more every year. This feeling of prolonged warm days is not just inside our heads; it is reality.
Climate change is increasingly affecting our everyday lives, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. The usual schedule of swapping our seasonal clothes does not align with the weather anymore, as our autumns are increasingly getting warmer for longer periods.
The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) highlights that fall and winter are fastly warming up across America, and an article from Forbes, ‘It’s Called ‘Seasonal Drift,’ Or The Science Behind A Warmer Thanksgiving,’ even goes so far as to say that “the boundary between summer and fall becomes less clear.”
Due to this drift between seasons, people are finding themselves in weird dressing situations: it is too warm for sweaters and a bit too brisk for tank tops and t-shirts. What used to be a predictable, reliable transition into cozy, warm layers is now unpredictable and delayed. The warm temperatures that last well into October and some of November force our traditional transitional wardrobes to transform into year-round friendly closets.
A developing trend because of the climate fluctuations is simply eliminating seasonal wardrobes. People might be more tempted to look for clothes that are easy to layer when it is cold, so that way it is still a usable piece of clothing if a random warm day comes along in the middle of November.
We are forced to continue wearing our warmer-weather clothes well into what’s supposed to be a cold season, and this makes opting to buy weather-versatile clothes a much more attractive option for consumers. This would allow for transitional dressing, which is the clothing that allows you to transition from one season to another without having to buy new, seasonal-specific clothing.
This could be the way people operate year-round with their wardrobes as a way of adapting to the unbalanced seasons. The traditional seasonal switch of clothes is now becoming a thing of the past, and there is no longer a definitive answer to when we should switch to our fall wardrobe when it can be a 70-degree day in October. This creates much uncertainty.
If we are no longer dressing for fall for as long as we used to, how much longer will autumn actually occur? Will it be summer until December? This uncertainty is directly reflected back to us through our clothing choices. There is a constant unbalance in nature, which leads to a balancing act regarding finding the right clothes to wear.
This is not something that only consumers are starting to shift into; brands and designers are as well. Moving into a seasonless approach to fashion allows designers to focus on making their collections classic and long-lasting.
If the industry participates in seasonless clothing, then it would be able to guide more consumers into a more sustainable approach to their own wardrobes, because there would be timeless options accessible to most people, and the need for new clothes would not be as prevalent.
The potential downsides of seasonless clothing would include the loss of beloved autumn and winter retail aesthetics. Like how stores will display winter clothing in the front and have new releases specifically for the season.
However, this brings the thought that one day there might not be seasonal aesthetics present in our lives if climate change continues as it is already. How much longer can we pretend that these retail transitions are actually aligned with what the weather is doing?
The death of the seasonal wardrobe is not just a strange, unexplainable phenomenon. It marks a new evolution in how humans adapt to our ever-warming world. Climate change is becoming unmistakably visible in the average person’s day-to-day life, with our closets being the first place these alterations in our climate become impossible to ignore.
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Hi! I’m Hannah Planey, A Magazine’s editor-in-chief. My staff and I are committed to bringing you the most important and entertaining news from the realms of fashion, beauty and culture. We are full-time students and hard-working journalists. While we get support from the student media fee and earned revenue such as advertising, both of those continue to decline. Your generous gift of any amount will help enhance our student experience as we grow into working professionals. Please go here to donate to A Magazine.
