Letter to the editor: L.L. Bean's gone soft

Well, it’s finally happened. One of the last bastions of solidly male fashion has succumbed to its “softer side.”

Anyone who received their copy of L.L. Bean’s summer men’s catalog in the mail knows exactly what I mean. Where those hallowed pages once bore pictures of rugged rubber-and-leather boots for hunting duck and sturdy, black-and-red checked wool shirts for keeping warm in the duck blind on chilly mornings, now one will find all manner of campside footwear with “vintage hunt, fish and camping motifs” printed on their insoles and shirts of “comfort-you-can-count-on” to “wick away” your sweat in an array of new fashion colors like Decall Jade and Bejing Blue.

For the even more adventuresome souls, Bean now has an entry called a Tropic (Aloha?) Shirt in a variety of tropical(?) prints and, also, lovely pastel colors.

It certainly has been a strange year.

Ed Collins

West Newton