Making a Spectacle of Myself

Erm, no, I don’t think so

I wear a bright red winter coat. That’s unusual in this city where — with the exception of the teeming workmen in their high-vis orange — solidly sober blues, blacks, greys and browns very much seem the norm, especially amongst the menfolk.

But beyond that, I seem to be unusual in wearing glasses. Men younger than their 50s in particular seem quite rarely bespectacled. Am I misreading the density of glasses here? Do Russians keep them off in the cold? (I could understand this as stepping into the subway station from the -15C street leads to instant and impenetrable fogging.) Do they have unusually strong ocular genes? A propensity for contact lenses? Or do they simply squint and make do, victims of habit, penury or vanity? It does seem to be one trait of the Williamsbourgeois hipster that hasn’t even made it to the young Muscovite twitterati.