A Most Fashionable Boycott

You can find out everything you need to know about the Trump-fixated L.L. Bean boycott by … perusing the L.L. Bean catalogue. Let's pick up the one titled Winter 2017, opening pages at random. Here, in the men's section, is "Our Genuinely Tough River Driver Shirt … the perfect cold-weather tee in two hardworking layers." Need pants? Try some Dad-wear on page 66: "Well-made, built to last." The jeans come in the Classic Fit, the Natural Fit, the Relaxed Fit, and the Standard Fit." The fit they don't come in is the Brooklyn Fit. The iconic lace-up leather-on-rubber L.L. Bean boots actually do fit into the hipster scene—but that's because duck-hunting footwear happens to be trending these days among youthful urbanites who think they look good with black-rimmed spectacles and a couple days' growth of beard.

The same goes for L.L. Bean's women's clothes, where turtlenecks rule, along with stretch pants, flannel pajamas, and one-piece swimsuits. Ah, sigh. L.L. Bean clothing is for squares. It's for people who prize such things as "warmth," "comfort," and "reasonable price." In short, it's clothing for the very people in rural America and suburban soccer-mom enclaves who voted Donald J. Trump into the presidency in November 2016.

Which of course means there's something hilarious about the L.L. Bean boycott: It's a boycott by people who wouldn't be caught dead wearing anything from L.L. Bean in the first place.

The boycott got started a few days ago when it was revealed that L.L. Bean board member Linda Bean, granddaughter of the Freeport, Maine-based company's founder, Leon Leonwood Bean, had donated about $60,000 to a pro-Trump political action committee called Make America Great Again LLC (it seems to have made a mistake by originally forming itself as a PAC and not a super PAC, and it's now in contribution-limits trouble with the Federal Elections Commission).

Tweeters went wild. "LL Bean: official winter clothing of the New Reich," said one of them @aerojad. Another tweeter, @darandper, commented: "Just one more reason NOT to buy overpriced LL Bean," commented another.