It’s Wednesday afternoon, it’s raining heavily again and students from the De Amersfoortse Berg lyceum are taking shelter under the roof of the bicycle shed. It even starts to hail. “I thought it wouldn’t start for another hour,” says Kjell from 5th HAVO. He is wearing a rain jacket but no rain pants. Never worn either, in high school. “I’m afraid I’ll get hot if that thing is over my pants.” Amir (5 HAVO) calls a rain suit “dull”. “It also takes too much time to put on and take off.” Indy (5 havo) wonders where you should put that rain-soaked stuff at school. And Neeltje’s (2 pre-university education) rain pants are at home because they don’t fit well and look like a “garbage bag”. Moreover, she is bothered by “that sound” of trouser legs rubbing against each other while cycling.
Autumn and winter were particularly wet and April is also remarkably showery. How do the students do that after the trip there, when they walk into their classroom in the morning soaked and still have to work all day? “Yes, that is very annoying,” says Indy. “But you have to learn to live with it.” Gabi (3 HAVO) puts on the dry pants that are ready in her locker. Her classmate Bram sometimes takes extra pants with him in his school bag. Neeltje and classmate Madelief choose a table near the heater. Do they have to be on time? Yes, “the places near the heating are always full.”
The aversion to the rain suit is not only among teenagers in a city. Half an hour’s drive away, in soaking wet Zeewolde, Marjon Schuring (54) says that you might as well get wet from a rain suit, “but from sweat”. When it rains she takes the car. Femke van Wijk (27) wears a raincoat but avoids rain pants. She doesn’t like how it fits and it doesn’t look nice, she says. “And I don’t feel like dragging it around.” She prefers to look at Buienradar.
Carefree cycling and carelessness in the rain: both are typically DutchGerard Rooijakkers ethnologist
The dullness of such baggy pants, the fuss: the resistance is understandable. And yet. The Dutch willingness to get rained on remains remarkable. Fifteen minutes of research at a Hilversum bicycle intersection on a Friday morning that is just as wet as predicted: of the 133 cyclists, five wear a poncho, eight an umbrella and eleven a rain suit. The 109 others let their pants get wet. Young people, adults, men and women. On their thighs: elongated wet surfaces. Why, you may wonder, is a rain suit considered lame and irritating in the Netherlands, while voluntarily arriving wet at school or work is not?
Scandinavians like to tell each other that there is never bad weather, ‘only bad clothing’. Just call Copenhagen. “Wearing a complete rain suit,” says press officer Jørgen Schlosser of the Danish Cyclists’ Union, “is quite normal here. Both for adults and young people. A matter of common sense, in our climate.” Schlosser previously worked at Copenhagen City Hall. “Women wore expensive office clothes, but also had rain suits with them. The director of the health department cycled with it from appointment to appointment.” It’s part of Danish culture, he says. And also from the Norwegian and Swedish: nature is in abundance, and the acquired love for the outdoors goes hand in hand with acceptance of waterproof textiles.
‘Not made of sugar’
That Scandinavian saying about the need for good clothing really speaks of a “180 degree different approach to rain,” says ethnologist Gerard Rooijakkers on the phone from the Dordogne, where he lives. Rooijakkers denotes everyday Dutch and European culture. “In Scandinavia they actually say: the weather always wins, so just adapt. In the Netherlands we believe that we have to brave the elements. We say to our children: ‘come on, you’re not made of sugar.’”
And cycling, unlike in other countries, is second nature. “Dutch cyclists,” he says, “don’t let themselves be told.” See Turkish fruit, one of the most celebrated Dutch films ever, cultural heritage, included in the canon of Dutch film. Two scenes stand out, says Rooijakkers. Monique van de Ven and Rutger Hauer freely cycling through Amsterdam past cars and trams. And they together on the sidewalk, kissing in the pouring rain. Their clothes are completely soaked, but that’s okay. In fact, she lies down and splashes around in a puddle and he gets two more glasses of red. “Carefree cycling and carelessness in the rain: both are typically Dutch,” says Rooijakkers. And they also go together: Mark Rutte on his bike to the Catshuis and the Binnenhof, and earlier Piet Hein Donner, everyone thinks that’s fantastic. But did they ever wear rain suits? “Everyone would find that lame.”
No wonder the Netherlands never became a leading country in rain fashion
“When it starts to rain a little here in France,” he continues, “well, everyone immediately takes out their umbrella there. The Dutch aren’t really into that either.” Avoiding the rain suit fits with that attitude, he says. “Dutch people often cycle short distances and the landscape is highly urbanized. You can stop anywhere and take shelter under an awning or viaduct.” Yes, in the countryside, if you have to walk twenty kilometers to your school, you will probably put on a rain suit. “But don’t forget,” he says, “the standard in the Netherlands is determined by the city culture.” And then there is also peer pressure, he says. “Young people in the Netherlands cycle to school in groups. Now imagine that you are the only one who steps off to get your rain suit out of your bag. Then you are the leader of the group!”
They are idiots, in their HEMA pants with reflector stripes – the soaked eroticism of Turkish Delight is very far away. No wonder the Netherlands never became a leading country in rain fashion. The idiots just got the flab they deserved. Hobbezak wears Hobbezak, don’t wear it anymore.
Rain pants from Australia
The idea that waterproof clothing can be stylish had to come from countries that accept the power of wind and weather. Denmark, Sweden and Norway turned necessity into a virtue. Shops in Bergen, Norway’s wettest city, offer an extensive range of rainwear so fashionable that even the trend-conscious will get a kick out of it. Breathable trench coats with a tie belt, wax jackets with shoulder capes, neat, light gray trousers, cream white bomber jackets, storm-proof Chelsea boots. Young Bergen women walk around with wine-red bucket hats on their heads.
The fascinating thing is that there is even a market for rain fashion in the Netherlands. The Danish brand Rains is well-known and you also regularly see people walking in the raincoats from America Today (“no more boring rain suit needed with these sporty raincoats”), even when it is dry. And when influencer Annemarie Geerts alias ‘demammavan’ a few months ago pointed out to her 95,000 Instagram followers a pair of breathable rain trousers from Australia that you can unzip completely so that you can get in and out straight away, her posts received ten thousand hits. Geerts’ followers are mostly mothers, they finally saw an opportunity to get their teenagers into the classroom dry. They are a kind of rain sports pants, says Geerts on the phone. Even her twenty-year-old daughter swears by it, and that was her “worst teenager”: in high school she blew her pants dry with a hairdryer she carried with her.
Will the Dutch shrug of the shoulders give way under the influence of that kind of fashion? Or perhaps under the influence of the climate? The future will be wetter, especially winters, as is evident from all climate scenarios.
In Zeewolde, Jasper van Burgsteden (33) and Ashley de Jager (28), fiancées, say that they each recently bought a rain suit. His first ever. Because they went to Iceland. Good clothing was a “necessity,” they read. They bought good stuff, not bad in terms of looks either, she in black, he in a sand-colored jacket and dark green trousers with tight legs. It really came in handy there. But no, he laughs from under a shop canopy, “here in the Netherlands they will definitely not see me wearing those pants.”
Rain pants, says 6 pre-university education student Tiemen from De Amersfoortse Berg on the way to his bike, are simply “not cool”. He accepts his retreat in jeans. On to Woudenberg. Twelve soaking wet kilometers to go.
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