Dear Clothing Retailers,

Please stop.  Please stop pretending that we can wear your beautiful fall clothes here in the Deep South.    

Look, I want it to be fall as much as you do.  That’s why I dutifully put out my pumpkins and festive fall wreath even though it’s 92 degrees and 158% humidity.  It’s why I still get excited for seasonal coffee drinks, even though there’s no other indication that seasons have changed.  However, I simply cannot endure your oversized cable knit ponchos, wool coats, corduroy pants, and rugged sweaters.  Or the suggestion, as provided by your mannequins, that I wear layer upon layer upon layer of clothing. 

Do you know what happens when we wear that oversized sweater poncho here in the South in October?  We become one-person sweat lodges, like the ones that people died in from overheating.   That lovely plaid wool jacket?  There may be one day this year I could actually wear it, and that day probably won’t come until January.  Also, those beautiful scarves you have draped around the necks of every mannequin? It would become a sweat rag that I could use to wipe my face after about ten minutes outside.

Listen, I love our Southern version of fake fall.  I schlep the kids to the pumpkin patch and sweat buckets with all the other parents.  I buy the candy corn and giant inflatable pumpkins for our yard and I make delicious pumpkin bread.  In short, I pretend that the seasons are actually changing, even though we all know that we’ve just moved from Summer Phase I to Summer Phase II, which lasts until November. 

There’s where you come in: I think you should dump the ponchos and coats, and instead roll out a Summer Phase II clothing line.  You could even use all those rich fall colors—deep burgundy, mustard yellow, and navy—but just skip the pants and make shorts and t-shirts.  You’d sell a lot of them, because as much as we embrace fake fall here in the South, we just can’t pretend that it’s cool enough to wear your real fall clothes. 

So happy fall, y’all.  Just not in those ponchos, corduroys, and scarves.  Shorts.  Think shorts.  

Signed,

One Sweaty Southerner