Stop with the "Sun Hoodies"!
Six or seven days a week I am on the trails in the Wasatch Mountains and this sun hoodie trend has got to go! Use some sunscreen or stay inside your house with your blinds drawn! It is absolutely ridiculous. The number of people out here who think a $90 piece of black polyester is somehow “cooling” is getting out of hand.
Here’s the pitch, as I understand it: the hoodie keeps you cool. That’s the whole sell. Except it doesn’t. It’s still fabric. It’s still covering your entire torso and head. You are still hot. You have simply chosen to be hot in a hood. The “cooling technology” is a marketing department’s way of saying “we didn’t want to call it a long sleeve shirt.”
But nobody cares if it actually works, because it looks cool, and that’s the real trend. You’re not cool temperature-wise, you’re just cool-looking while sweating through a hoodie on a July afternoon. You’re wearing a beekeeper suit for people who are scared of freckles.
Look, sun protection matters. But covering up isn’t the same as staying cool. You’re not beating the heat. You’re just hiding from it in a very expensive long sleeve shirt with a marketing degree.