How to Wear a Poncho

I've been singing the praises of the poncho for years, even writing a pun-trified tribute to the noble shawl on a friend's blog.

Look, this is me in my favorite poncho:

poncho villa

Toasty ecstasy.

I love spotting ponchos on other people, but I have noticed a disturbing tide of poncho neophytes who just don't know how to don them properly. Most abused is the style of poncho sometimes called a "wrap" - a quadrilateral length of fabric with a slit in the front.

It's often just tossed across someone's frame as though they are a flagpole, waving a sad blanket across their back.

This is what I mean:

This is definitely not the only offender I've seen; it's just the one I remembered to take a screenshot of.

Your magnificent knit mantle does very little when merely draped across your shoulders, as on the unfortunate individual above. We are not curtain rods, my fellow fashion frontiersmen. We need our outer layers to keep us from freezing.

We need our wraps to wrap.

Achieving heated heaven in your poncho is not hard. So, modeled on a somehow even more awkward specimen - myself - here is the proper way to don a poncho:

1. Show off your poncho a bit. Bask in its fabulousness.

2. Drape across your shoulders so that your head is in the center of a sea of thermal material. Do not, as some have, stop here. Keep going.

3. Grab your right-hand flap of fabric...

4. ...And toss it across the front of your body. This is the part of you that would remain cold if you stopped at the second step.

5. Grab your left-hand flap of fabric...

6. ...And jauntily toss it...

7. ...Until it's over your right shoulder.

8. Feel both snug and smug.

Now that you are properly cocooned, you will reap the benefits of being both stunning and steamy warm.

Here's how it looks from the back:

wrapper's delight

I get approx. 928 compliments when wearing my poncho this way, even though this particular wrap is festooned in cat hair and snags and often smells like yesterday's pho because I wear it all the freakin' time.

People love it. And if I see you wearing a poncho like this, I will love it, too.

Can any outerwear compare to the poncho? Let me know your thoughts!