Fall fashion in Tallahassee is way harder than it should be since Florida’s weather patterns are even less reliable than the professor that never emails you back. You basically have to change clothes multiple times a day because they just don’t make enough clothes that are designed to keep you both warm and cool at the appropriate times. Yeah, midterms and finals and figuring out how to get home to pig out at Thanksgiving take a lot of energy, but the real struggle this time of year is figuring out what the hell to wear every day because of these problems:
1. Fall colors don’t exist here.
We have a brief period when orange can be seen around town, mostly in the form of pumpkin patches. However, almost all of the plants here jump directly from green to brown. The hues of red, yellow and orange just don’t exist here, so forget about trying to match the tree leaves that your friends from New England keep posting pictures of on Instagram.
2. Temperatures are temporary.
You can’t just replace your summer clothes with your winter wardrobe because you’re just as likely to need some mittens as you are to need a tank top around Christmastime. While in the summer you can pack away your warm jackets, you have to have everything readily available in autumn because who knows what Florida’s bipolar weather will throw at you hour by hour.
3. You absolutely must learn to layer.
Like I said before, temperatures are temporary. You wake up in the morning to a nice, crisp 55 degrees thinking you can get away with wearing a sweater over your coffee-stained shirt and no one will know. But just kidding—by noon you’ll wish you would have worn something else beneath it because now you’re dying from the heat and you just wish you had on a plain short-sleeve shirt. Get used to carrying around your jackets for the same amount of time that you’re actually wearing them.
4. You can’t accessorize as much.
I know, I know, all you want to do is deck yourself out in the cute scarves, gloves, boots, fur coats and knit hats you see our northern counterparts wearing as they strut down the streets of Manhattan. But nope, this is Tallahassee. By the time the sun is up in the sky and the morning chill is gone, you’ll be ditching all the warm accessories and looking for some iced beverage to try to retain any comfortable coolness in your life.
5. You can’t help but break fashion rules.
Let’s just face it, we’re not far enough north to follow the rules of fashion that are set up for the cooler months. Like the whole “nothing white” between Labor Day and Memorial Day? You’re kidding, right? But we’re also not close enough to South Florida to totally rebel and continue to wear swimwear and flip flops every day. The struggle is real.