A layer of snow has covered much of the Washington area for two weeks now, today the mercury barely poked above freezing, and on Thursday it looks like it might be a Rick Moody kind of day. December has been a veritable winter wonderland, and by wonderland, we mean that we “wonder” how often we’re going to “land” on our ass before all this white stuff disappears. Aside from the slushy sidewalks, one of our biggest cold weather complaints is the lack of fashion and function afforded by various outerwear garments (i.e. Randy in “A Christmas Story”).

While by no means a new style, fingerless gloves and mittens are enjoying renewed popularity this season. We never quite understood the point of fingerless gloves (don’t your fingertips get cold?) until we found ourselves grumbling every time we wanted to grab cash for our coffee or change the song on our iPod.

Anthropologie’s (3222 M St. NW) fingerless offerings include the rather pretentiously named but functional “galloway forest driving gloves,” and Urban Outfitters (3111 M St. NW) has a range of both fingerless gloves and “armwarmers”—think legwarmers for your arms. Or, hey, you could just wear sleeves. And for those who still think fingerless gloves are silly, Kate Spade’s (3061 M St. NW) luxe fingerless mittens have a flap that can be flipped back and buttoned when you need full use of your digits.

(photo from urbanoutfitters.com)