Belt me up, Scotty.

I had a fashion crisis yesterday. A serious fashion crisis. Normally my biggest fashion dilemma in the morning is: Am I dressed? In my own clothes? Am I adequately prepared for rain/snow/hail/hurricane-force winds? Am I still wearing my slippers? Whether I am in style generally does not even enter the equation.

That’s because Alaska is not exactly a trend-setting fashion hot spot. We’re more like a fashion dumping ground, unless you consider the fashion industry’s brief love affair with Carhartts, the official state uniform. I remember going to New York years back, seeing Carhartts in the window of Canal Street Jeans, and thinking OH MY GOD, NEW YORKERS DO MANUAL LABOR?

At the airport in Seattle or Portland, you can always spot the gate for the flight to Alaska by the way the passengers look. Mostly they are in Patagonia or North Face, or overalls, or else in flannel and acid-wash black denim Wranglers from two decades ago. Flying into Anchorage feels like traveling back in time. When people ask me what time zone we’re in, I tell them the truth: 1985. Feathered hair? Check. L.L. Bean duck boots? Check. High-waisted tapered-leg Lee jeans? Check.

In some ways, it’s good to be out of touch. I don’t know what benighted soul thought those puffy sleeve shirts were attractive. They were bad news back in the 1980s, and they are bad now. No one looks good in them. Yet they were even a huge fashion trend in India, and I remember wearing salwar kameez with gathered shoulders so wide I had to turn sideways to get in the door. Not flattering, believe me.

Plus, no one here judges you by what you wear, unless of course it’s outdoor gear related, in which case people can be as vicious as Simon Cowell. Mostly it’s debates like: Would you freeze to death more quickly in wool or polypro? And is that really the latest high-tech waterproof windblock fabric? Wherever DID you get it, dahling?

Otherwise, no one really cares. That homeless dude on the bench could have a couple of million dollars buried in his trailer lot. The hot woman dressed to the nines could be a hooker. I can wear my Uggs to court. Even the Performing Arts Center here actually encourages people to wear whatever feels comfortable to their shows. When you go to a play or concert, you might see women in full length evening gowns while their date is in, yes, Carhartts.

I think that’s cool, especially coming from the East Coast. A friend of mine from Alaska who visited Boston asked me why there were so many gay men there, and when I asked her why she thought that, she said, “Well, the guys are all so – you know – dressed up.”

Of course, if you wait long enough, everything comes back into fashion, even though some of us here never thought it was out in the first place. Like the puffy sleeve, or those skinny-leg pants that teenage girls covet today which can be seen on middle-aged women here, especially in colors like purple and green.

So yesterday, two events converged to make me realize just how out of style I am. One, my husband was able to pick up the Bug from preschool, meaning that I had a couple of hours after work to myself. And two, I went to a bookstore and flipped through a fashion magazine.

That’s how I discovered that BELTS ARE IN.

For absolutely no good reason, my heart started racing. Did I own a belt? A COOL belt? A belt that could be worn on the outside of clothing? And where was my waist, exactly?

Suddenly, I had a horrible flashback to 1983, when MTV videos were at their heyday, and that Eurotrashy Duran Duran look was in, as was neon, rubber jewelry, and Dippity-Do, when we all wore lots of pink spandex and grey paisley with white tap shoes, and I, sorry to say, owned a wide pink vinyl belt that I wore to cinch a white button-down shirt. Oh, the shame.

Of course, it looked TERRIBLE, and I was never comfortable because I had to fiddle incessantly with the shirt to make it poof just right over and below the belt. I may have even burned the entire outfit when the 80s ended and I could just wear old Levis and a zip hoodie like God intended.

And now, right there in the pages of this magazine were these celebrities and fashion models somehow wearing THAT SAME BELT. Under their breasts, slung at the hips, cinching their ridiculously tiny waists. Most of them look awful, too, just like I did 20-odd years ago.

Maybe they all need to move to Alaska and get a REAL sense of style.