Make America Turtleneck Again

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Turtlenecks (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

Man Repeller’s Amelia Diamond, light of my (night-reading) life and the worst cook in the world, has enlightened us on the real history of the turtleneck. (https://www.manrepeller.com/2013/11/the-genesis-of-turtlenecks.html, part of the “real history of fashion.”)

I’m here to give you the fake but accurate version.

Turtlenecks were created in the 1960s by intellectuals with bottle-bottom glasses and frog eyes. Originally called ‘neckwarmers’ they were intended to increase circulation of blood to the brain. Without the turtleneck, Jean Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Susan Sontag, and Gloria Steinham would not have given us the brain tickle they have given us. The world would be a lot less smart without them. Spies like us wear turtlenecks, too, Julia Kristeva among them.

So I am here to make a prognosis, the Second Coming of Great Change. Can you hear it? 

Make America Turtleneck Again.

What? It’s spring. I know. But you never can plan too far in advance for these things.

Fashion designers, as ever, have their finger on the pulse. Just look at all of these exaggerated possibilities. Not only neckwarmers but actual brainwarmers too. Pre-frontal cortex, we got you covered.

You might be fooled about these new fangled balaclavas. That’s what they are officially called and it’s been on the tip of everyone’s lips after Brooke Bobb and Ellie Pithers wrote articles on them, links here
https://www.vogue.com/article/balaclava-ski-mask-fall-2018-trends-accessories and http://www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/balaclava-fashion-trend). But these balaclavas are actually a repercussion of a look Woodie Allen made popular in 1972. (Made popular? Really?)

In his film EYEWTKAS (filtered version, the Russian version, i’ve coined a new Russian word which is a covert acronym for Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex), Woodie dons a sperm costume. He plays a sperm, so this is not funny but actually quite serious, conveying the concerns any thinking sperm might have: ‘Don’t send me into the world! One hears all these rumors about hitting your head up against rubber walls!’). So I called the new look, the sperm look. What could be unsexier than the balaclava look. Sounds like sticky honey pastry, right? Anyway, no one has adopted the ‘sperm-look’ (yet) but I have faith that my 32 followers will soon follow suit.


Never leave home without them. They are great for rainy days, shitty mood days, bad hair days and nights. But more importantly: they are a sign of better times to come.

more photos here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bhr0U5DBCL5/?taken-by=aprilvonstauffenberg

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