Apologies right off to strict vegans or anyone else offended about the fur thing.*
We seem to be having a winter this year. Cold temperatures and a heavy wet snow (
Winter Storm Avery, pictured beleaguering a Brooklynite at right), surprised the New York City region on November 14. On my way to chorus rehearsal, I knew I was in trouble after only one block from the subway. I was wearing a wool pea coat but no hat. The cold reached in deep, sipping on my life force. I ducked inside a warm store, and thought longingly about my serious winter garb back home.
As a middle-aged female of partly Eastern European stock, I am by nature nicely insulated for cold weather. As long as I have the proper clothing I can stay as warm and comfortable outside as I am right now sitting indoors at my computer, even if the temperature goes down to 10F (it rarely gets colder in NYC). However, I've realized over the years that certain fibers are better than others for the purpose of staying warm, and I wanted to share this information with you all. Two tropically-reared friends -- a college pal and a roommate -- once appreciated this information enough to tell me that although they still hate winter, they now feel it won't necessarily kill them.
You can make a good argument for synthetic fibers/fabrics these days; I own a thinsulate blanket and love its light warmth, and it certainly is a breeze to clean. But nothing beats natural fibers. Your body understands them and works with them.
So we've touched on the fact that a hat is essential for staying warm. I leave it up to you what hat you choose, but suggest it contains at least some wool and covers your head at least down to the tops of your ears. But what to wear on the rest of you? Here's a review, by fiber type, to help you choose everything from base layers to outerwear. And how to clean it.
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| Silk worm, cocoon, and filaments |
Silk
As a base layer, this fiber is an excellent first defense against chill. Get a pair of silk long underwear, a long-sleeved top and leggings, both with comfy but snug cuffs. The material should be thin enough to fit under all but your tightest clothing. Shop around; you can get tops and bottoms for a total of $50 or so. Silk breathes very well, so you should not have problems wearing long underwear indoors unless your home or workspace is horribly overheated.
How to clean silk: if your garment is dyed, I like
Martha Stewart's instructions. If not, I find silk long underwear can be washed inside a mesh bag in a load of cold, gentle-cycle laundry using a delicate-wash detergent, preferably with the Woolmark label. I use Woolite (rarely) for stained or heavily soiled silk, Ecover Delicate Wash for normal wear, and Eucalan for end-of-season wash of lightly used garments.
Wool
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| Merino Sheep |
My blog is named Brooklyn Sheep because I am a hand spinner and know a lot about wool, the quintessential warm fiber. Sheep's wool comes in all sorts of varieties, from thin and soft to thick and impenetrable (such as boiled wool). If you have one fine-textured sweater (lambswool, merino, or cashmere) and one larger thick sweater (such as a cabled sweater or ski sweater), that should be enough. 100% wool is best. Really. (Are you thinking: why get myself something I'm going to have to dryclean every time I wear it? See below.)
How to clean wool (and mohair): First off: dry cleaning isn't necessary! I’ll show you how to handwash, and I promise it’s less effort than you think.
First off: This might gross you out a bit, but your wool garments will last longer if you wear them a few times before washing, and then wash them by hand.
To wash by hand will occupy a big sink or the bathtub for an hour, most of it rest time. Get some
Eucalan, a special wool soap (not expensive at bulk sizes) that you do
not rinse out, because gently squeezing the soapy water out of your garment will flush out most dirt.You can get the unscented kind and add your own essential oils; I like a mixture of cedar, rosewood, and lavender to help deter moths. Put a squirt or two of Eucalan in the sink or tub right under the tap (cool, not cold water) as it's running. You will need a two-inch depth of water. Just lay your garment gently on the surface of the soapy water, and walk away: let it sink in and soak for about an hour. You can gently, slowly push garnents below the water line if they’re taking more than 20 minutes to sink, buy Do Not Agitate: moving wool garments around in water, even cool water, tends to shrink them. At the end of the soak, move the garment to the side and let the sink drain. Gently press down on the garment to expel water. After pressing out as much water as you can accomplish in the sink,* lay your damp garment flat on one or two old towels, roll up like a jelly roll, and squeeze. Then lay the garment flat on a fresh towel (or even a special mesh drying rack like
this or
this — the latter is my fave for its small size when compacted), and let air dry; unless your home is really humid (above 50% humidity)
, a thin sweater will be dry by the next day, and thick sweaters in one more day. Your woolens will be soft and clean. The natural lanolin in Eucalan will soak into the fibers and keep them pliant. Any other treatment -- even delicate wash soaps like Woolite -- will strip wool fibers and leave them vulnerable to breakage. That's what makes wool itchy (to be fair, cheap wool garments will always be scratchy - they are made of low-quality, short wool fibers that either come unspun or break easily, leaving shreds that stand out like tiny prickles, like split-ends on human hair).
* If you’re washing a lot of wool and/or silk garments regularly like me, I highly recommend the
Nina Soft spin dryer. Place it in the tub, load your damp garments, and it will spin out more water than the towel method can achieve.
Non-sheep wools
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| © R.T. Willbie/Animal Photography |
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Yes, there's a rabbit under there.
© ItsNature |
Mohair is in a class of its own. According to the
Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the word "mohair" is derived from the Arabic
mukhayyar ("goat's hair fabric").This is wool from the angora goat (right).
Do not confuse this with "angora," not technically a wool, since it's made from the hair of the angora
rabbit (left), which gives garments a kind of furry halo; it is much more delicate than mohair, so best for items you wear infrequently.
To clean angora: for 100% angora garments, dry-clean only, but if it's a blend, you can probably hand wash as for wool/mohair.
Mohair varies in fineness and quality according to the youth and breeding of the animal. Most mohair is a bit scratchy; I generally don't wear it against the skin. The finest variety is kid mohair, which is from the first shearing of a young angora goat.
To clean mohair, see wool (above).
For the softest natural wool, there's qiviut. Incredibly expensive, this is the undercoat of the musk ox, pictured left. If you have $650 to burn, you can get a
tunic of this stuff knitted by a cooperative of native Alaskans.
To clean qiviut, tell your dry cleaner to treat it like silk. If you dare hand-wash, put it inside a fine-mesh laundry bag with the least amount of Eucalan possible.
Alpaca (right) is a more affordable fiber that is soft enough to be worn against the skin, particularly if it's baby alpaca.
To clean alpaca, dry clean at a silk setting, or hand wash like for Qiviut.
Summary so far: wool plus silk should do
Wearing silk underwear plus a wool sweater should take care of your warmth needs in almost any situation. However, you may not wish to dress in layers. In this case you want to move on to the next levels of fiber warmth: feathers and fur.
Feathers
I'm talking about down. Goose feathers are okay for pillows and, when mixed with goose and/or duck down, for comforters, but for warm garments down is the only game in town. The fine filaments of these under-feathers, which both insulate and waterproof a fowl's belly as it glides through cold water, can trap air and warmth without weight. I can wear cotton clothing under a down coat and stay toasty warm.
When I
launder a down garment or my comforter, I use
Nikwax Down Wash. It takes some time, but I prefer this to the expense and toxicity of drycleaning. I recommend that anyone living in areas where winter temperatures stay below freezing (32F) for weeks at a time get herself a down coat that reaches at least to mid-thigh and has a hood. If you wear a close-fitting hat under the hood (and be sure you're wearing a decently thick wool sweater too), you should be comfy down to 0F. Add a mohair scarf to cover the lower half of your face and provide extra insulation around your neck, and you should be comfy in windchills down to -20F.
Ethical stuff/trigger alert: wool and feathers are collected from animals who remain alive after the process; silk is made from the cocoons of moth pupae who are killed in the process. The final fiber in this list, fur, requires the slaughter of an adult mammal.
Fur
This fiber is controversial in my culture. But when you're dealing with serious wind chill -- here are definitions of the federal government's
wind chill warnings, plus a handy
wind chill chart -- well, there's nothing like putting another skin between you and that cold. Especially if it's furred. Think about buying used or vintage fur garments if you feel uncomfortable about supporting the fur industry.
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Ushanka, literally "ear flap hat"
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Once upon a time a friend lent me his real Russian rabbit fur trooper hat. The kind Russian soldiers wear while marching across Red Square in winter. My friend's hat was spectacularly warm! I wore it the first day of the 1996 blizzard in NYC. It not only kept me warm; it made my head look huge. When I shopped at Fairway that afternoon, people got out of my way (rare event for a shy creature like me). One of those reptile-brain things? ("Big head = something I don't want to mess with.") I shoved my cart through crowds of bread-and-milk-hungry Upper West Siders and got out of there at my own speed. It was wonderful.
I have stopped at the level of the fur hat. Perhaps at some point I will own a fur coat; however, that seems to be a level of luxury that just doesn't jibe with my idiom. One needs a certain amount of glam and the right setting -- perhaps transportation in a chauffeured Bentley -- to "do" a fur coat well. I saw a lady tourist on the subway once, sporting a beautiful ankle-length fur coat, and it was ridiculous. She might as well have been wearing a "you can mug me now" sign around her neck.
To care for fur garments, a professional fur cleaner is your best option, though I suppose these tips from
wikihow could work, and these
brushes are rather pretty.
* I don't like the idea of animals dying to keep me warm. But as an omnivore, I engage in that transaction almost every day. At least, if I wear something made of fur, the death of the animal is something I honor for years, even decades, of wear and careful storage.
