Yuen: In defense of the shacket (and other ubiquitous fashion statements)

Sometimes you happen to look up and notice that everyone is dressed in the same uniform.

Vineeta Sawkar was jolted by this epiphany after walking out of her hair salon at 50th and France.

"I was like, 'Oh, my goodness. I am the only woman not wearing a shacket?' " she tells me.

What's a shacket, you ask? Gentle reader, it's derived from the words "shirt" and "jacket," but you could also think of it as what happens when a flannel and a Snuggie have a baby.

The cozy, shapeless outerwear has been trending for at least two fall seasons, and there's no shortage of options. Plaid shackets, denim shackets, Sherpa shackets, fleece shackets, boyfriend shackets, vegan leather shackets. In this era of comfy-or-die, they clog the racks at every store, from Nordstrom to Old Navy — as well as my social media feed.

"I get sucked into those Instagram videos that show the latest fashions. I follow different stores, so I know shackets are in," says Sawkar, WCCO radio host and veteran Twin Cities journalist. "But they are everywhere."

If you are not of a select demographic for which the shacket has become a conversation piece, I can see how this would seem odd from the outside looking in. I had the same reaction after seeing my friends post pictures of their teen daughters — all wearing the puniest, shortest dresses to homecoming this fall. How do these girls sit? Aren't they cold? When there are so many styles and cuts and lengths to choose from, why do they all want to look the same?

In one photo, about 20 girls stood in a row, arms locked around one another. Long beach waves parted down the middle, with the Instaworthy head tilt, they all flaunted their youthful legginess. The colors or fabric varied, but it was the identical dress, copied and pasted.

Leading up to the dance, one of my friends tried to talk her daughter out of buying a teeny-tiny dress, but she protested: Mom, that's what all the girls wear. The kid went ahead with the dress, and her mom kept walking behind her to tug it down.

The illusion of unbridled personal choice in our attire reminds me of that epic monologue in "The Devil Wears Prada" where Meryl Streep's Anna Wintour-like character launches into a withering takedown of her new assistant, played by Anne Hathaway, who's wearing a frumpy blue sweater that at first glance seems unrelated to the forces of Big Fashion. Streep informs Hathaway the sweater is not just any shade of blue, but cerulean.

"You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, and then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets. ... And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores, and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin.

"That blue represents millions of dollars of countless jobs," Streep adds, "and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry, when in fact, you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room."

My shacket, myself

Do I look good in my shacket? Not particularly. It's plaid in cream and baby blue, with oversized buttons, probably made for someone who was taller and had a longer neck. My husband says it ages me, and swears that his late Grandma Audrey had the same exact coat. He offers this critique despite the fact that his go-to fall wardrobe staple is a puffy work flannel— his beloved man-ket.

Sawkar says so many women sporting shackets on the street look fabulous, just like models in a catalog.

"I've tried them on, and I look like a lumberjack," she laments.

She might be on to something. The aesthetic definitely carries a Paul Bunyan's girlfriend vibe, and that could explain its regional pull. Minnesota ranks third in the nation for Google searches for "shacket," following only North Dakota and South Dakota, as my colleague and data visualization whiz C.J. Sinner discovered.

Eye the trend lines, and you'll see the searches peak in the autumn months like the Space Tower at the State Fair. I'm convinced that Upper Midwesterners, so relieved by the end of sauna-like summers, urgently purchase fall jackets knowing we only have a two-week window to look cute. By late November, we'll be sliding into those hideous black walking sleeping bags that will soon be encrusted with road salt from our car doors.

Sawkar says she's not inclined to get a shacket anytime soon. I'd give this trend one more year before it falls by the wayside as cold-weather residents realize that shackets are impractical closet hogs. The shacket will be ridiculed as the subject of memes about how in the early 2020s, we tried so hard to appear outdoorsy and chic, and just ended up looking the same.

But until then, I'm still wearing mine. With the dread of winter looming, we shacket — as a way to hack it.