T here’s a swanky Italian brand called Herno that sells a surprisingly alluring cream, knitted hood thing . It takes me back to the winters of my childhood when my mother would force my brother and me into scratchy balaclavas. This protective headgear would be in place for all outdoor excursions from mid-November until early April.
If we didn’t comply, we were assured that an ear infection, with biblical levels of accompanying pain, was a stone-cold certainty. I don’t remember seeing any other children in London in the Seventies wearing them. Perhaps my mother mistook February in Fulham for the near-Arctic winters in her native Canada? Where, possibly in my imagination, she grew up wearing head-to-toe caribou hide.
What makes the Herno version different is that it’s sort of casually baggy. The balaclavas of our youth were as tight as wetsuit hoods — so snug that we became as one with the garments. Which appeared to be knitted from thistles.
Luckily, the Herno model is made of wool that’s been lovingly fulled — a process that makes it super-warm and soft..