Typically, summertime is warmer than wintertime.

Generally, one will wear less clothing during summertime than wintertime.

Occasionally, in the South of New Zealand summertime can feel like wintertime.

Realistically, during these cooler summer days one would be foolish for dressing in their traditional ‘Kiwi summertime’ garb.

Unbelievably though, there are people who do it.

The other day, in Canterbury, the weather went from two days of mid-thirty temperatures to just high teens the next.

Overnight the weather had turned comparatively cold.

Despite this, as though ‘summertime’ in the New Zealand South demands a particular dress sense, out and about I was seeing T-shirts, singlets, jandals (also a great many goose-pimples) and the like.

It was not a warm day yet, these ostensibly staunch (but maybe just uninformed or maybe senseless) Kiwis were determined to embrace this New Zealand ‘summertime’.

Thing is, given the geography of our country, New Zealand is prone to sudden and dramatic changes in weather yet the people, oh the people, we are so damned determined or demanding or resilient or principled or stoic, spiteful, scornful, pissy or something, that most of us cannot tolerate the idea that during our summertime, we should ever have to wear anything less (more) than our favoured Kiwi summertime ensemble.

When it comes to ‘cutting off our noses to spite our faces’, for most of us Kiwis, it’s a culture thing.

Sure, they were cold but, you’d better believe, they were embracing their Kiwi summertime.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by K Y Summer

Photography by Orphan Cold