As the winter season rolls around, the students of Priory School are bundling up and preparing for another treacherous winter. I have been in the winter game for quite some time now, considered by some a veteran, and I’d like to pass on my advice of how to combat the frigid conditions that are slowly creeping upon us. Seeing we have already had our first snow, I’m expecting we will get an arctic blizzard any time soon, which means we must begin the process of selecting our winter coats. You may have heard the term “puff” when walking through the halls, but many of you may not know exactly what it means. According to the Nadaud English Dictionary, puff is defined as “the degree of bulkiness and/or fluff present in a winter coat.” Puff is a measurable value, similar to temperature or mass, but math is not applicable when calculating it. Rather, it is entirely dependent on the use of your senses. For my analysis, I prefer to use sight, smell and taste. You’d be pleasantly surprised how much information one can gain from using their tongue. The biggest things I’ve noticed that have contributed to optimal puff are things like body size, what other pieces of clothes being worn and how well the person owns the puff.
Body size is a very important element in the puff game and can completely change what a coat means from one person to the next. Say, for example, there are two boys who have the same body stats (both 5-foot-10, 160 pounds, broadness of shoulders, etc.) but one of them has longer legs than the other and in turn has a shorter upper body. You’d think this would have no effect on the amount of puff, but a visual aid such as the one below should help you see the difference.
As seen on the right, the boy with the shorter legs looks stubby and doesn’t fit into his coat as well, even though he is the same size as the boy with longer legs. But on the left, the boy with the long legs fills his coat out much more, giving him a much better puff-to-body ratio. This is just one example of how puff is something that both makes perfect sense but also makes no sense. There has never been a proven formula that has successfully calculated the amount of puff a coat has, showing that there is no rhyme nor reason to this field.
Another very important aspect of your puff is what you have working with the puff. When I decide what I am going to wear with my coat, I always make sure it is the center of my outfit. I tend to avoid things like skinny pants or shorts because they make me look like a complete buffoon and could stain my reputation as a master of the cold climate. Another flagrant in the world of dressing with puff is wearing any open-toed shoes, especially flip-flops. When you are walking down the street and making your first impression on a bunch of people, the first thing that they will notice is your clothes. If you walk up to them with a puffy coat on the top that signals to them it’s cold out and flip-flops on the bottom that tell them “we’re going to Cancun for winter break,” you’ll be taken as a fool with no style. Apart from the clothes you put on, some guys just aren’t able to pull off the puffy coat look. It’s nothing against them or who they are, but all I’ll say is it takes one to know one. Unless you have been in the puffy coat community for years, dividing the pack of puffy coat wearers into the fakers and the reals is a very troubling task. Because of my years of involvement in the group, such as going to the annual PCC (Puffy Coat Convention), I can sniff out a fake puffy coater, both figuratively and literally.
Even though dressing the puff and styling the puff are the first steps to ensuring a proper puff-to-body ratio, I believe the most important part is owning your puff. You can wear perfectly baggy pants with great closed-toed shoes and a pristine puffer, but all of this will have no effect if you can’t own it. Confidence is key when you’re engaging in puff, and it’s pretty easy to tell if someone is trying to act like they have confidence or if it’s an everyday thing for them to go with the puff. This is common in people known as “performative,” or people that put on a performance through their looks or actions. The only thing worse than someone that can’t style a puffer is someone who tries to act like they are, so please don’t be that guy.
At the end of the day, puff is something that isn’t made for everyone. I like to use the quote, “some people got it and some people don’t.” I think it serves puff culture well as it acknowledges that the people that understand puff and appreciate it for more than just its warmth know how deeply important it is and that there’s just some people who will never get it no matter how hard they try. If you need help with any type of wintertime questions or dilemmas, shoot me straight in an email at [email protected] and either I or my agent will respond to you in two to three business days. I wish you all my very best and a very merry Christmas!
