# 48 - Puffer Math

This is a very serious scientific article, with a chart!

Feb 26, 2024

Background

When I lived in St. Louis, there weren’t a lot of us bike commuters. During my rides into work, I would occupy myself by quantifying this phenomenon, i.e. I counted every cyclist I saw. Some days it would be 6 or 8. If I counted over double digits I felt ecstatic. Yay, there were more of us!

I’ve recently revived this practice, but instead of counting cyclists, now I’m wanting to grasp the amount of puffer coats in the environment.

I hadn’t noticed that puffer coats could be fashion until I watched season 2 of Next in Fashion on Netflix. One of the contestants exclusively designed puffed up pieces of clothing. I admired the dedication to his aesthetic, even though looking like a marshmallow doesn’t really resonate with me.

Then during our recent cold spell, I took advantage of a trial membership to a hot yoga studio. Entering the locker room to change, I was suddenly enveloped in a sea of black puffer coats - long, short, hooded, fur lined, glossy, matte. An abundance of the same basic coat. Ever since, I’ve been noticing them everywhere.

Methods

For scientific purposes, I counted the number of puffer coats I observed in the wild. And by wild I mean the Museum Campus area of Chicago around 12pm on a Wednesday in February, wind chill a balmy 42 degrees. Below are my findings.

Results

Discussion

As you can see, black puffer coats are the most prevalent, which correlates with my anecdotal observations. I was surprised to see grey in the number two spot, I thought navy would be more popular, as it’s the better non-black neutral in my opinion. But, that is why we do science, so we aren’t just going around assuming our assumptions are correct. Overall, I find most of these color choices extremely dull. No orange or red? No patterned puffers? Yawn.

I don’t have a personal vendetta against puffer coats. I actually own a thin one that I use as a mid layer or in spring/fall. What I am against is sameness everywhere. I recently read an article highlighted in

Thomas Klaffke

‘s Creative Destruction newsletter about how the built environment, technology, cars, etc are seemingly all the same and also very ugly. I’d like to add puffer coats, especially black ones, to this list. Yes, they are warm and functional, but they are booooooring.

I love outerwear because it has the ability to be both functional and revealing about the person wearing it while completing covering them up. Wearing a leather jacket or an upcycled quilt coat says a lot about the wearer. I don’t get creative, or edgy, or unique from black puffers. I get snoozefest. Which is a shame, because some of these coats can be $1000 or more! A company like Canada Goose can’t make something more visually appealing for a grand? If you are going to torture geese to make a jacket, can you at least offer it in some interesting patterns or a color that doesn’t put me in a coma?

I googled Canada Goose puffer coat so you wouldn’t have to

All of this sameness in fashion choices can get depressing, but then I think about the maker movement. We’re out here sewing our own pants, knitting our own sweaters, crocheting our own hats. There are even plenty of patterns to make our own warm winter coats! And all these handmade items are fun, colorful, thoughtful, original, etc etc. I love the fact that the top I’m wearing or the hat I’m sporting is probably the only one like it in the universe. In a world where everything is reverting to the mean, it feels like taking a stand against sameness to be an outlier in a hand knit sweater.

Support Meander Textiles with a coffee ☕️

🧶 What am I making now?

I feel like this section is a little boring, because I’ve been pretty slow in the making department lately.

But I did pin down the Ti Leaf design and basted a bit more. I’m happy to take my time with this- it’s nice to have a slow stitching project. I think I want to turn it into a wall hanging when finished…