Having spent years living in creaky old apartments with weak heating and poor insulation, I’ve spent whole winters with thermal underwear practically glued to my skin.
The base layers I’ve worn have mostly belonged to Uniqlo’s HeatTech line: inexpensive tops, leggings and socks that have become a sort of staple for cold-weather urban dwellers. Uniqlo says the products – which come in standard, “Extra Warm” and “Ultra Warm” varieties – use “cutting-edge fiber technology” to “wick the moisture from the human body and convert the kinetic energy into heat”. In fact, Uniqlo doesn’t actually call HeatTech a base layer. It’s collaborated with designers like Alexander Wang and JW Anderson on special edition HeatTech, and claims the products are so warm that they make “multiple layers of clothing … a thing of the past”. One of their ad campaigns shows a man walking in just a light blazer and T-shirt in 3C (37F) in downtown New York.
