How Tim Walz put Midwest style centre-stage

You don’t appreciate the specificity of your own family until you spend time with other families. Suddenly habits that seemed perfectly normal come into sharp relief. Similarly, the particularities of your hometown aren’t always clear until you venture outside your time zone. I was born in Minneapolis, where we could walk from our house down tree-lined streets toward Kenwood Park and around Lake of the Isles. Ten minutes in the other direction and you’d arrive at the great Walker Art Center and Guthrie Theater. You could park right in front of the house. I’ve lived my adult life in fast-talking, fast-walking, extremely direct New York. You can’t find a parking spot anywhere (if you’re crazy enough to own a car).

Minnesotans, I quickly realised, had a reputation for easygoing decency and even a profound mildness, which is a hair short of being boring. I started to adjust. My dad says that I talk faster after decades in New York. I still feel a kinship with Minnesota’s favourite literary son, F Scott Fitzgerald, who grew up in St Paul, across the Mississippi from Minneapolis. Old Scott and I attended the same high school, as it happens. He went off to Princeton and, since my grades precluded the academic heights, our paths diverged.

Why is Minnesota on the mind? Well, the state has come into focus because its governor, Tim Walz, is on the presidential ticket. Minnesota has produced two vice presidents (Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale) – a good omen for Walz. Though when those two men ran for the presidency, in modest Midwestern style, neither succeeded. A true Minnesota lesson about aiming too high. We like ambition, within reason.

Walz exemplifies our habit of being plain-spoken. He speaks directly, he’s not a man of jargon. He also dresses in a straightforward way. In a world of micromanaged politicians, Walz feels like a breath of fresh air. He’s not beholden to the consultant class; he’s not – and this is no judgement – beholden to a personal trainer. He’s that rarity in public life: a well-adjusted man.

Walz’s default wardrobe, unusually for a politician, does not rely on suits. Like many modern men he doesn’t look particularly comfortable in them. More often he’s seen in plaid, flannel, a parka, sometimes a camo hat. These clothes speak to the recreation of Minnesota. He also looks natural in Red Wing boots, made in Red Wing, MN, since 1905, and functional for farmers before they were adopted by LA creative directors who have never had to hose actual mud off the famous white rubber soles. (Last month in Milan, Fendi sent models down the runway in a new Red Wing collaboration that will put a shiver in any Midwesterner’s cold heart.) 

The Midwest, for those unfamiliar with our geography, spreads from the sparsely populated Dakotas in the west across Iowa and Nebraska (where Walz was born). Then you have Minnesota, right in the heart, before moving on to Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. Now, it’s silly to argue about these things, but Kansas and Missouri don’t quite feel truly Midwest because they don’t suffer intense winters down there. And some of the virtue (don’t call it righteousness!) of being Midwestern comes from facing brutal weather with stoicism.

That’s a lot to keep track of. In the simplest terms: this is not an area where anybody comes to ski. Indeed, the Midwest is defined by its assertive, almost profound flatness. Coastal types might say this lack of geographic dynamism is reflected in the personalities of the inhabitants. Minnesota has a history of Scandinavian immigration; the Lutherans were pious, unpretentious and believed that putting a porch on a house inspired sloth and other undesirable habits. These people believed that after some hard work you relaxed with more work.

The suspicion of ornament extends to sartorial matters. “Midwest style is largely devoid of flash or details or visual twangs that are going to draw too much attention,” says Michael Hainey, Chicago native and former deputy editor of GQ, now at Air Mail. But there are advantages: “It plays well anywhere. It’s not attracted to trends – unless they’re a few years late.”

One other critical detail: it snows in Minnesota. A lot. We transplanted Midwesterners raise an eyebrow watching New Yorkers lose their collective minds when it snows. Manhattan shuts down when there’s a mere dusting of powder and people start hoarding canned goods as if they’re about to be iced in on a boat in the Arctic. “This is nothing,” we say, and recall the Blizzard of 1991, when a few feet of snow fell on Halloween: “Now that’s a storm.” Either you’ve shovelled your car out of a snow drift at seven in the morning or you haven’t. This character-building exercise leads to sore backs and vows to spend next winter on some remote island in the Caribbean.

Weather informs Midwest dressing. As Hainey says, “You can keep your fancy Milan-made, thin-soled loafers. We need a boot you can walk through two miles of wintry slush in.” If somebody is wearing a flannel shirt in the Midwest they’re not being ironic or referencing their favourite band; they’re trying to stay warm. 

These people believed that after some hard work you relaxed with more work

What’s great about the Midwest is, even if you live in a city, you’re not far from the country. The low-lying green hills near our cabin in Wisconsin remind me of gentle Dutch landscape paintings. Small towns like Bloomer, WI, are reassuring and handsome, though many of the buildings on Main Street have seen better days. Bloomer is the former “Rope Jumping Capital of the World” – and I was sad when that was no longer its official designation. The hardware store is expansive and staffed by helpful, expert and, yes, plain-spoken women, who know most of the customers by name. In August, you can stop to buy sweetcorn outside the gas station – local farmers drop it off each day and you fill up your bag and leave money in a little box.  

Though we don’t have mountains, we do have lakes. Many, many lakes. Minnesota is “the Land of 10,000 Lakes”, and on them you can fish in the summer and skate in the winter. Though we won’t stop there – we’ll fish in the winter as well. Oh, I’m sorry, are you unfamiliar with ice fishing? Is that not part of the après-ski programme in St Moritz? Well, let me paint you a picture. Imagine the bleakest, most soul-destroying February day with a brutal wind-chill. The football season is over, and your beloved Minnesota Vikings have crashed out of the playoffs again. Do you stay inside and read War and Peace by the fire? No. You drive onto a frozen lake and get into a structure the size of large phone booth with a few of your friends, cut a hole in the ice and try to catch a walleye or a bass like an absolute lunatic. This makes slightly more sense after you’ve been drinking whiskey (or, heaven forbid, some local schnapps).

Midwestern must-haves

Michael Williams, who writes A Continuous Lean, a style newsletter, has covered the clothing scene of his native Cleveland for years and appreciates the importance of practical style decisions. “There’s no such thing as Arc’teryx weather in Cleveland. There’s only an un-ironic Carhartt season,” he says, referring to the workwear brand often worn by Walz but also beloved in big cities worldwide. It should be noted that Williams now lives in Los Angeles where he doesn’t have to wear insulated anything.

The Midwest is not a magnet for trends. “It doesn’t feel correct for a Midwesterner to be obsessed with fashion issues,” Williams notes. Walz, for example, is often seen in a T-shirt. That’s what he usually wears to the Minnesota State Fair, also known as “The Great Minnesota Get-Together”, which makes it sound like a backyard barbecue – which it is, in a way, but on a larger scale. The State Fair features concerts, livestock, butter sculptures, the Dairy Princess and an 800-pound pumpkin. But it’s especially known for its fried pickles, corn dogs, cheese curds and various other things that will make your cardiologist blanch. And it’s here where Walz, grinning widely, is in his element.

Walz is a Bob Dylan fan. Dylan, né Robert Zimmerman, is from Hibbing, MN. We’re getting up toward Canada now – though Dylan usually refers to his childhood on “the Iron Range”, which sounds more poetic. (Midwesterners, especially those who leave, are not against a little reinvention.)

But Walz is also a fan of the great local music I listened to as a high-schooler: The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, the Jayhawks and Soul Asylum. Now we’re talking! They all played in First Avenue, the club in downtown Minneapolis where I went to All Age shows as soon as I could drive – you’d recognise it from the film Purple Rain. Oh yes: Prince, another legendary Minnesotan (who owned more pumps than work boots). Walz signed a law naming a highway after the musician, using purple ink. A reminder that while the Midwest at its best stands for plain-spoken civility, it can still contain multitudes.