By: Gabriela Yareliz
Have I gotten weak? I wondered. I watched the woman walk across the train platform in a beige tweed blazer.
You have to understand, the day has 100% humidity, and it has rained on and off. It’s not cooling rain; it’s steaming rain. The air is sticky, or as Theo Von says, hot like it just ate a damn soup. Just looking at her makes me fidget with discomfort.
I saw a recent article that said that some train stations underground rise up to 132F degrees. It is humid outside and sweltering underground.
I spent summers in the roasting belly of humidity of the United States— no, not my home state of Florida, but the Washington D.C. area. Ahhh the DMV summers. The hottest internship summer wearing blazers that stuck to the back of my neck. Soaked in sweat. At least for camp, we had to wear skirts (church camp), so that kept us sticky but surviving. Catching a breeze, so to speak. These days, I would rather go to work in a light sleeveless blouse and linen shorts. I cannot be bothered.
At least in Florida, there is central AC everywhere. NYC doesn’t have blasting central AC everywhere. You are always sort of warm.
Who wears tweed in the dead of summer? I didn’t even know that was a thing. Maybe it only works in LA or Sweden? The tweed-clad woman looked like a wet puppy. But is it worth it? Or, to borrow a line from The Office, is it classy enough?
I looked around. Another woman had on a linen button down that was half open and haphazardly tucked into her blue jeans. Her hair was frizzy and hanging like yarn— still, she was very pretty and classy. I preferred this look to the tweed. Just looking at the tweed made me feel like I was suffocating.
Are we less formal now? Do we care less? Remember being a kid and dressing up? What did I wear as a kid in South Carolina? Did I run around half naked? I do remember running through sprinklers. I remember hot summers, even hotter than this one. And yet I tolerated so much more. Is that what youth does to us? It makes us tolerate more than we dreamed imaginable?
One thing is certain— you will not catch me in summer tweed. Because summer tweed shouldn’t exist.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 