The turtleneck is a noose for the body, a belt for the throat, a fanny pack for the neck — except the only thing you can store inside one is shame. If I see someone wearing a turtleneck, I assume they’re suffocating.

With all due respect to your insistence that turtlenecks are the height of fashion; delusion is never fashionable. Maybe there was a time when the turtleneck might have been cool. Sleek, even. But those days have long passed. The turtleneck began as the utilitarian uniform for the working class in the late 1800s, and was eventually co-opted by sailors in the 1930s. Cut to Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe giving the neck nuzzler a more form-fitting, sexier look (complete with the bullet bra) in the ‘50s and ‘60s, then to the full-sleeves version becoming the uniform for feminist pioneers in the ‘70s, commandeered by Gloria Steinem.

Ah, but then said little fashion revolution came to a grinding halt, or, rather, an unfortunate shift. Video games and the computer arrived, and with them, so did the couch potato. By the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the turtleneck became commercial; a costume for the comfortable, fashion’s greatest enemy. Underneath puffy vests, clad with elbow patches, multiple sizes too large (or, god forbid, too small), it became the symbol of the burnout. Everyone from adults who knew better to defenceless infant children could be seen wearing a throat throttler. And just like that, it lost its edge.

It’s now a noose for the body, a belt for the throat, a fanny pack for the neck (except, the only thing you can store inside the furls of a turtleneck is shame).

If I see anyone wearing one, I simply assume they’re suffocating.

This is not to say that the fashion world has caught up with me and my sage advice, what with sleeveless turtleneck sweaters, turtleneck vests, turtleneck dresses and turtleneck dickies (forget hooves and a tail, this is the true sign of Satan). No one looks their best in a turtleneck, which brings us to a lovely little bit of irony. The only time it is ever appropriate to wear a turtleneck is when you’ve been saddled with a hickey. Unfortunately, the likelihood of receiving a little love bite is severely decreased by having a turtleneck in your wardrobe.

Or maybe you’re Steve Jobs. And no one can be Steve Jobs now. Not Ashton Kutcher. Not Michael Fassbender. Not even Steve Jobs, because he’s dead. Along with the turtleneck.