It’s that time of year again. The orange, red and yellow leaves crunch beneath my feet. The crisp, cool fall air enlivens my consciousness as the fabric of my wrap flutters in the breeze. It is cape weather. Like the most beautiful part of fall when the leaves display their brightest array of colors, cape weather is far too short. There’s a brief window of time – perhaps just the month of October – when a cape is perfect. Just warm enough over a sweater. By November it will be too cold and only a snugger fitting coat will do. But for now, I have wings.
When I glance through current trends for fall, it seems like capes make the list every year. It’s understandable; they photograph well and make an ordinary look more glamorous. You can check out this slideshow titled Shop the Trend: Capes – whether a short shrug or a luxurious expanse of fabric, capes add panache to a look. Yet despite the ubiquity of capes in fashion slideshows, I rarely see someone else on the street wearing a cape. It’s too bad because the cape has been part of fashion – for both women and men – for centuries, at least as early as medieval times – and it would be nice for the tradition to continue.
This is my first cape, a wool/acrylic blend from the 1960s that has a matching skirt. The first day I wore the ensemble to work, one of my colleagues recalled that her mother had a cape suit that she wore in the 1970s. Her mother told her that she felt different when she wore her cape – more confident, powerful. She asked me if I feel different when I wear a cape. I do.
I don’t know if it takes confidence to wear a cape, or rather if it brings out my confidence once I hear the whoosh of the wool when I whip it around my shoulders. It’s a transformation, like Superman changing in the phone booth. The confidence I feel could come from that superhero association, though the wool certainly doesn’t remind me a bit of the spandex version superheroes seem to prefer.
Or maybe it is that when you wear a cape, all eyes are on you – it adds a bit of mystery. After all, it’s not just Superman who wears a cape. So does Dracula. And there are many melodramas and films noirs where the villainness wears a cape – like this 1940s black boucle capelet.
Perhaps the sense of drama is the reason that I don’t see many other women wearing capes, even when they make the fashion magazines’ “must-have” lists and when it is perfect cape weather. Maybe donning a cape feels like becoming a character in a costume drama and that you’ll have to start speaking as if you’ve taken diction lessons.
Nonetheless, when I look at my wool capes, I think Mary Tyler Moore, not Joan Crawford. Whether plaid, bright colored or earth-toned, most capes are somehow happy. Fun. Light. Like I could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Or maybe, just toss my beret into the air on Nicollet Mall.
– Nancy L. Fischer
Me, at Blacklist’s “Vintage Did It First” fashion show, fall 2012. Photo by Ed Neaton.
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