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This Missoni Fall '09 runway look is begging me to crib a phrase that a novelist buddy used in his wedding speech to describe an agoraphobic season spent barricaded inside his dorm room: “Bad out there, good in here.”

When I am forced to leave my cozy home, only the whites of my eyes show through all my swaddling, exactly in the manner of this photo. As cats everywhere can tell you, covering one's head is especially soothing. And it isn't just cold I am keeping out; it's other people's intrusive vibes. Short of an invisibility cloak, this festival of layering is better than armour to stop the barista from chippering at you.

These days, we don't always dress for attention, jacking our calves out, exposing our bosoms and gift-wrapping our butts. Sometimes we desire anonymity.

Fashion people often use the label “avant-garde” (which technically means innovative) as a euphemism for the shape-shifting, feature-obscuring sexlessness of this look. The run of the fall show at Missoni – the Italian house known for its knitwear and more specifically for its signature multicolour stripe weaves – involved lots of hoods, scarves as hoods and sweaters with giant cowls that can be pulled up over one's head.

When legendary American designer Bonnie Cashin first did this in the eighties, she called the creation a “snood.” This was a play on 18th-century hair coverings, but it will always make me think of something Dr. Seuss would have come up with.

All I had to do to find a knockoff of this look was walk up Toronto's Avenue Road, where the thoughtful H&M ad department had placed a billboard featuring a mega-cowled sweater hoisted up over the pretty girl's head. In the actual H&M store, where I must say it is hard to believe retailers are suffering as the queues seem as robust as in boom time, I found all manner of further swaddling and snoody folderol. Adding this giant cream round scarf/hood ($6.95) to this long cowled cream sweater ($29.95), badda bing! You, too, can be a giant pupae for much less than the runway pupae.

It's a long time to spring, baby, so batten down your snood.