Military Fashion Show

Winter is a terrible time for looking cute. If you want to stay warm, you're obliged to bundle up in so many layers, you don't really resemble a fashionista so much as a basket of laundry. This is made worse when your friend, a self-proclaimed lover of "ugly sweaters," decides you simply must own one of his old green military surplus sweaters.

Standing at attention

Despite its shapelessness, you are convinced you can and must find a way to make a passable outfit out of it. So what do you do? Start with khaki. Military greens and khaki go together like pretzels and salt. Like babies and rattles. Like black and pink! Just slightly less fun to look at.

You choose a twirly khaki skirt that you got (on sale, of course) at Rainbow and pull the sweater down over it so the skirt looks extra short and the sweater isn't all bunched up like a fuzzy fat suit. You'd like to wear knee socks with this getup, but unfortunately, the ladylike shoes that make up your entire footwear collection are not going to cut it, so you'll have to go with the chunkiest shoes you have--calf-length brown boots. A dubious color match, but the best you could come up with.

You realize, of course, that you are going to freeze to death. With 2/3 of your legs exposed, any thermal benefit you might gain from the bulky sweater is completely undermined. You have just made a tactical error that could result in hypothermia, but at least you'll go down looking spiffy!