A Treasury Of… Minneapolis Fashion and Interior Design Blog

Any day now it’s gonna be snow sport season across half the globe, so speed-screening the 1969 flick Downhill Racer is just the trick to slicken any stud’s winter style up quick – on the slopes and off.

In Racer, Robert Redford does his usual stoic-dick brand of schtick as Dave Chappelet, the newest member of America’s then-uncelebrated ski team.

From his dead-end hometown in Colorado to various mountaintop hamlets throughout the Alps, Chappelet’s wardrobe centers simply around sporty, proto-70s basics.

The powder blue chambrays and sherpa-lined overcoats of Chappelet’s farmboy past pair up effortlessly with the showier swank of his jet-setting future, through high-necked sweaters and mirror-lensed shades.

Essentially, as long as you stick to Chappelet and his teammate’s main palette of navy, red, and white, you’ll whip your winter look up to top speed in record time.

True champs will dare to go that extra mile and get their frostbitten hands on some old-school aftershaves, a perwinkle period van, and a Swedish snowbunny or two to slide around the slopes with.

Get ready ‘n set all like that and Coach guarantees your style’ll earn imaginary medals all winter long!

The green-stemmed pair are bright and friendly.

But we should all know by now I like my frames dark and delinquent-like.

Cheap, thirty-five buck frames by Cheap Monday at Alter.

Additional Treasury reader Holiday Wish Lists are still to come but I wanted to divert the attention back to me for just one brief post. Or rather, a version of Me That Shall Never Be.

An itemized list of my thwarted evolution:

1) Spurred on by the styling of the Fine and Dandy Fall lookbook I risked my reputation to proclaim that beréts were back to see another fashion day. I ordered a seven buck blue one but no matter how I folded or flopped it I never looked like a fine or remotely dandy gentleman, I just looked like a 1980s lady.

2) The Avantguard frames by Han at Blackbird are the kind of algebra instructor eyewear I’d like to wear regularly, but irony is essential to the equation and if there’s one thing my hard-faught moustache of 2009 has taught me it’s that my face just doesn’t do irony.

3 & 4) This winning Wilson jacket and these Beams Plus oxfords I could wear, and I would wear, constantly probably, if only my home shipping address was way less American and way more Japanese.

5) And finally, I can’t change where I live or what my head can and can’t do with boy beréts and Mathlete frames. Though I very easily could’ve added this red Filson Sportsman bag to the Me I’m Trying To Be. But I waited too long and Context sold out.

So, dang it. For now, I’m stuck just being the Old Me.

When I get the inspiration and ingredients for a Me I Could Actually Be, I’ll introduce you to him. He’ll probably be pretty swell.

Sooo do not need these sunglasses.

But so so sooo don’t care.

The flat top silhouette is staking its claim as the shape o’ the season. That’s the story I’m sticking to, at least.