Lots of people have been making Bernie Sanders’ mitten memes in the past few days (see my analysis of them here), and LOTS more have been enjoying them! As a maker of slightly oversized mittens that get a lot of attention when I wear them, I thought, why not show them off like Bernie did? Don’t just make the meme, be the meme! So with my friend Edgar, I took a folding chair outside of my building, and assumed the pose to get a few pics below. And then I thought, as I often do for most things I do, why couldn’t other people do the same? I mean, lots of people would have fun and beautiful and awesome mittens to show the world. This is the perfect moment to show them, and this is the perfect way to show them!

A few keys to the shot

While you may want to show your mittens Bernie Sanders style for fun, as not with too much serious effort to get everything right, there are a few really quick fixes you can do to get good value for the effort. My friend and I didn’t get everything quite right, and some of this was post shoot analysis, with the shoot happening on a whim before day light went away… and with snow flurries coming down. Anyway, compare to the photo at right and note:

• Right leg over left, right hand over left, as if covering your watch on your left wrist.
• Turn your hands to have the backs face a tad to the camera to see more details of your mittens.
• Minimize the profile of your feet by pointing them directly or almost directly at the camera.
• Sit back against the back of the chair, only leaning your head and shoulders forward a bit, not all the way forward.
• Scrunch up to broaden your shoulders and widen your body a bit, as well as shorten your neck.
• Look half way between the camera and the ground, not at the camera. This is key as this isn’t a stare down, just someone caught unawares sitting around waiting for something to happen.
• Try and wear non-descript clothing, preferably of an opposite intensity (light vs dark), or at least not a similar colour, to the mittens so the mittens “pop” more in the photo.
• Wear your puffiest or largest sized jacket to get some upper body bulk unless you have some already.
• Borrow someone’s glasses unless they were heavy rimmed or crazy looking. We don’t
• Obviously, wear a generic blue COVID mask if you have one, but any mask will do.
• Photo angle is straight on for you, but the chair is a little tilted to the sitter’s right, like 1 o’clock tilted if you were judging angle like a clock.
• Vertical angle is about sitter’s head high, straight on.
• It would help if you had stairs behind you for the same stair like, grand stand, effect behind Bernie in his picture.
• Take photo with lots of room around you as you’ll want to be able to square crop (or use the square photo feature on the iPhone). You’ll have lots of pixels to crop without getting pixelated.

If you’re not sure about some of these features, look at the version of one photo above, compare to Bernie’s photo, and compare to the one below that showed another set of mitts, but wasn’t nearly as well composed. Photo wasn’t taken straight on (see the tiles on the diagonal). My right hand didn’t cover watch. Too high to see the top of my head. I leaned forward to try to look a bit bigger. And so on. But whatever. It was just a fast blitz of good fun rather than a really serious shoot but we got better with the photo above taken later!

The mittens are pretty small in these pics, compared to how I had shown before, full frame, basically. However, I can tell you, they’re a lot funner to look at and share in Bernie Style rather than product style!

Good luck if you try, enjoy, and do drop a link or message in the comments, or via my men’s fashion Instagram above, if you try!

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