Pull The Wool
Over My Eyes

The minimum coverage that the balaclava offers is more than any other single accessory will do for you. The humble beanie is sure to leave your neck exposed, a portion of your forehead chilled, and if it’s particularly withholding, the tips of your ears will have to fend for themselves, too. The scarf is a swath of false promises. Its length seems more than capable of keeping you warm, but it’s a garment with commitment issues. Vulnerable to the forces of gravity, the scarf leaves the neck, where it’s been wrapped. It grasps toward the already-warm chest, or toward the fold of the armpit. Worst: it reaches for the slush-covered ground. You can’t blame the scarf, it’s categorically incapable of staying faithful.

The balaclava, though, was made with dependability in mind. In the fall of 1854, during a Crimean War battle, British soldiers swept through a Ukraine fishing town. They’d arrived in their summer uniform and turned cold. When women on the homefront heard about this, their hands got to knitting a very particular garment to keep them warm. That battle would be named Balaclava, for the town it took place in, and the hat would go on to be named after the battle—a Russian nesting doll of association.

The term “balaclava” is often used interchangeably with “ski mask,” the pair lumped together because they cover a similar surface area. This feels inappropriate, a failure to recognize the unique attitude of each accessory. The balaclava is always handmade-reminiscent, if not actually handmade. Even when the garment is factory-produced, or comes attached to a high price tag, it tends to have some of that original humble charm, an air of the past when handknitting garments would be the quickest way to warm a group of soldiers. Take Givenchy’s brown wool blend balaclava or Cecilie Bahnsen’s mohair and silk pink number for instance. The ski mask, by comparison, feels like a doubling down on the utilitarian nature of the garment and its shared shape. It feels intimately linked to the popularization of synthetic fibers, and thus the remoteness of factory production. One of its defining factors, allowed by these new fibers, is its tendency to grip onto the face for dear life, never fumbling and exposing the sheathed skin.

Regardless of the distinction, the pair have weaved in and out of public interest since their inception. They’ve made sporadic appearances in the world of high fashion beginning, at the latest, in 1965, when the New York Times reported on a winter collection by the British designer Clive that featured a sequined lace balaclava that gave “a snaky look to a ball dress.” Recently Raf Simons and the late Virgil Abloh have featured their own renditions of the balaclava on the runway, each designer putting their spin on the hat and using its eccentricity to establish the mood of their collections.

More recently, the interest in this winter accessory has reached a fever pitch—the TikTok hashtag #balaclava has, as of this writing, surpassed 120 million views. Nylon, Dazed, CNN, and the New York Times have all published their own coverage, peeking through the knitted enclosure to consider its deeper meaning. As the attraction unspools, it becomes difficult for onlookers and followers not to notice how much is nested within the trend, most notably in the conversation around which head coverings get to be considered fashion; people who wear hijabs and niqabs, for example, have pointed out that overlap and discrepancy between the way they are treated in comparison. “I’ve had a lot of people ask me, as a hijabi, how I feel about people wearing balaclavas,” says Tayah (@subwaytattoo) in her video about the balaclava trend. “I think you should go for it. All the balaclavas. But while you’re wearing it, I want you to keep one thing in mind. I feel like a lot of people think that wearing a hijab is this horrible, tortuous process that everyone hates, but ‘we do it for God though.’ It’s not! While you’re wearing it, you’re warm, you’re comfy…you think you look cute? Guess what. Me too! While you’re enjoying [wearing a balaclava], maybe just keep in mind how we could also enjoy it. It’s not miserable.”

A balaclava is really about prizing your own comfort. The current wave of balaclava adoration feels less beholden to high fashion than it does to the pandemic-era surge in knitters and our newfound collective comfortability with covering one’s face. When walking down the street, the donning of one is sure to draw eyes still. And this is the key pleasure of the balaclava: the comfort brought on by the feeling that the garment keeps you safe from the outside world without sacrificing the simple pleasure of being perceived. The garment is, in essence, melodramatic. It is overprotective; it insists on pulling out all the stops, not allowing for any chance of chilliness on your average walk. A balaclava boldly revokes the element’s effects, but does so while thumbing its nose at the idea that one must forgo leaving the house in order to avoid this drop in temperature. In the monotony of winter, a histrionic hat is a welcome indulgence.

Rachel Davies is a writer living in Boerum Hill. They write daily for Architectural Digest and are at work on My Most Important Room, an oral history project about memorable spaces.