by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Do Montrealers really know how to dress? Really? Then look around the next frigid day when the winter wind hits your ears like boiling paint remover. You’ll notice that half the people out there aren’t even wearing hats!

One cold day, I promise, I’ll go out in my Taurus and toss a tuque to anybody showing bare ears. Nah, they probably wouldn’t put ’em on anyway. I don’t know why. I often ask these stubborn hat refuseniks to justify their nude noggins but they’re too cold to think, I suppose. They never explain. Nor are they moved when I tell ’em about how I almost lost my left ear riding my bike in Point St-Charles in the good ol’ cold winters of the early ’90s. Now if there is a city on this planet that should embrace hats, c’est icitte maudit. Montreal, you’ll recall, was founded by beaver hunters sitting next to dams hoping to catch a fat little rodent for fashionably furry hats for Europe.

There is, however, a limit to tolerable winterwear. And yes, I’m talking about the sudden and unfathomable return of the dreaded leg warmer. My first sighting in years occurred last week as I waited to be served by one of the very nice men working at the Amherst license bureau. Right across from me sat a horrific vision of a young misguided woman clad in mauve wool tubes stretching from her knees to her ankles.

By the time I called security, she was gone. But not forgotten. Ever since, I’ve been repeatedly reminded that the organizers of the leg warmer conspiracy had succeeded in replanting this fashion weed in our city. I beg Montreal women to reconsider their folly, although I’ll grant an exemption of Roxanne, the goth stripper at Cleopatra’s, who for years (I’m told at least) has delighted male audiences by climbing onstage and seductively removing these horrid contraptions.

But what right - you ask - do I have to tell women how to dress? It’s only fair that in our new gender-neutral world, women should have to endure the painful restrictions that males must abide by. Unlike men, women can dress any number of ways: dresses, pantyhose, jumpsuits, maxis, minis, pantsuits, heels, stilettos, fuck-me-boots, whatever.

Men, on the other hand, have the choice to either conform and wear pants and a shirt or else be considered a lunatic. Any man who appears in public with anything but a variation on the old English gentlemen farmer costume is a religious freak, a nutcase or some kind of fancypants, which is the worst thing you can call a man (Yes, I know, but “cocksucker” is more of a challenge to a fair fight, whereas “fancypants” is a form of hit-and-run derision offering no chance at reasonable redemption).

And God forbid a businessman or a politician ever appear in anything other than the standard suit and tie. Just consider what the wetsuit did for Stockwell Day or the hairnet did for Gilles Duceppe. Even venerated male celebrities get punished, like the great Adam Ant, who was teased last year in a pub for his delightful trademark mix of pirate and native Indian wear. And MC Hammer, a laudable fashion non-conformist, sadly went broke after the public soured on his Turkish whirling dervish pants and Sergeant Pepper jacket.

Not that long ago Montreal youth routinely designed, sculpted and consulted with others about their “image.” The streets teemed with punks, mods, rockabillys and goths, including the instantly-famous Canoehead, a highly-esteemed character well loved for his 18-inch-tall rockabilly hairstyle.

Back then it was commonplace for Montreal youth to dress outlandishly. Nowadays, everybody seems, uhh…inlandish, too scared to offend their bosses at the telemarketing company maybe. The near extinction of the urban fashion rebel is a troubling sign of a lack of our collective will to challenge convention. It’s a symbol of our defeated imagination. Although maybe that revolutionary spirit is alive, and being expressed more subtly through hats and leg warmers. :

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca