Brigid Delaney's diaryFashion This article is more than 5 years oldThe day I wore a puffer jacket and became a George Costanza meme
This article is more than 5 years oldBrigid DelaneyMy brother bought me a jacket and told me not to wear it outside. But I decided to go to the cinema in it
My brother comes to visit me on the weekend bearing a gift. It’s a fancy North Face puffer jacket he found at the op shop for $10, in excellent condition.
“It’s worth at least $600,” he says.
I’m excited for my new jacket. I have a wardrobe full of Sydney clothes that don’t quite cut it in a central Victorian winter, where the nights are brilliant with cold and the air is sharp and clarifying.
He arrives off the train carrying what looks like a sleeping bag but is actually the jacket in its own special case. We walk to my place, where I eagerly undo it.
“The thing with this jacket,” says my brother in his most serious voice, “is that you cannot wear it outside the house.”
“Why not? That would defeat the whole purpose of a jacket. A jacket is something that you wear when you go outside.”
I pull the jacket from its cover. It sort of bounces out. I can see why he has advised me not to wear it in public. It’s not a normal puffer jacket.
“If you wear it inside you won’t need heating …” he says. “You’ll save on electricity.”
The jacket resembles a sleeping bag with arms – the sort of sleeping bag people take when they might be in a situation where they have to sleep in the snow. To call it bulky is an understatement. It looks like an inflated life raft and sits on the kitchen floor taking up an enormous amount of space.
I put the jacket on and we both crack up laughing. My brother punches me in the arm and I don’t feel a thing.
“It’s like a grossly exaggerated puffer jacket,” I say taking it off. “Perhaps the person that owned this was a polar explorer.”
The next morning I disobey my brother and wear the jacket outside, to the farmer’s market. Walking in it is difficult. I cannot swing my arms. They sort of sit away from my body at 45 degree angles – suspended by great volumes of nylon and goose down feathers. But slowly crossing the highway, I feel invincible – as if the bulk of the jacket will protect me if I am hit by a car.
I get a take away coffee and a snack at the market but find I cannot eat or drink while wearing the jacket. Its high, bulky collar keeps getting in the way – there is so much puff in the sleeves that my hand holding the cup can’t reach my mouth and I spill coffee down my chin.
“I can’t believe you wore that outside,” says my brother when I get home.
I give him a rundown: wearing it is like being in a sweat lodge or wrapped in roof insulation, it’s too hot in there! The inside of the sleeves are spiky – maybe it’s loose quills? It’s slowed me down and I cannot eat or drink in it AND I look like a gridiron player. Yet wearing it, I feel cosy and coddled.
That night it’s very cold – bitter in fact – and I decide to wear the puffer out to a documentary film festival. There are many other people wearing puffers at the film festival but they are the Uniqlo sort that are streamlined and flat. They are flattering puffas.
I want to get in their faces, grab their jackets and say, “that’s not puffer, this is a puffer!” And then softly shirtfront them with my enormous padded chest.
But I don’t. I am the Walrus.
When I run into friends at the theatre they immediately start laughing and then hitting me on either side of my body and saying, “It’s Gortex” over and over. This is apparently a Seinfeld reference to the episode where George wore a similar big puffer to Jerry’s, and Jerry and Elaine mocked him and whacked him in the arms.
Like George, my spatial awareness in the jacket is all off. It’s the sartorial equivalent of drunk driving – I knock stuff over and bump into people. I edge out entire families at the counter. My bulk is impressive. I have trouble clearing doorways.
At the documentary festival I am seeing Last Men in Aleppo, a film about the incredible first responders who have stayed in the besieged and ruined Syrian city, trying to pull out people from bombed buildings.
I arrive late and take a seat on a couch that has been placed lengthways. I am conscious that because of the angle I am sitting at, and more importantly, because of my massive puffer, the man behind me cannot see the film. I can sense him behind me – shifting forward at a sharp angle – trying to see around my massive silhouette.
On screen there is a really tense moment of shelling, and Syrians running for cover as bombs rain down and buildings fall. Will they save the baby trapped in the rubble?
I try and take the jacket off slowly and quietly - but the puffer is noisy. It’s like someone crinkling a large chip packet – except I am the chip packet.
After the film, people take pictures of me in the jacket and the theatre owner makes me into a meme and puts me on their Facebook page next to a picture of George Costanza in his big puffer saying: “It’s Gore-Tex!”
The next day, I send Mum a picture on WhatsApp of me in the jacket. “Look what Matt got me!” I write.
She writes back: “Michelangelo woman.”
After the laughter and the ridicule and the warnings not to wear it in public, it’s a nice message to get. I wouldn’t have thought of comparing me in the puffer to Michelangelo but perhaps it takes one’s mother to see the form and sculpted biceps of her child underneath the super-sized jacket.
I recline on the couch, still in the puffer. I am warm and cosy, I am a Michelangelo woman.
Then another message from my mother: “I mean Michelin woman.”
Oh. Damn autocorrect. And despite my puffer, I suddenly feel deflated.
- Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia writer and columnist
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