New York Times Says Climate Change Is Killing Personal Style

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Climate change may be slowing eroding our planet and damaging ecosystems around the Earth, but the New York Times has got its finger on where this issue really hits home: our closets. In a weird, tone-deaf report from the Styles section, the paper profiles woeful New Yorkers who have had to leave their Burberry capes at home due to unseasonably warm weather this year, pointing to them as examples of where climate change really hits home.

"Yes, there are fears that Greenland is melting away," a teaser for the article reads. "But for some, the impact of climate change is more personal and more immediate: Will they ever get to wear their winter clothes again?"

As various characters in the story lament their predicament, the report goes on to theorize that M.I.T. should develop a new discipline, tentatively called "Fashionology-Climatology" to address all the confusion.

For now, people have to learn to dress in layers, which is another dismal problem all on its own, the New York Times states. The report specifically picks out "residents in the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest" who are innately less fashionable  — which is forgivable, of course, because they are constantly forced to dress in layers.

"Layering successfully is a challenging art that requires much more thought and sartorial sophistication to get right, whereas a camel coat with complementary gloves, hat and scarf offers relatively straightforward élan," reads the report. "Good fences make good neighbors, and distinct seasons make good dressers."

Hopefully, snow will come soon so these scores of confused, once-fashionable dressers will be able to wear their winter clothes once again.