Generally speaking, it’s fair to say that the media we consume offers a heightened sense of things that we experience in our real, day-to-day lives. Although it’s hardly a headline grabber the way that sex, drugs, or violence are, there are fewer disconnects between the glamorized media portrayal of something and the mundane reality of it than rain. In fiction, rain means dramatic tension: looming terror, unfathomable tragedy, and inescapable depression. Unless it happens to be happy rain, which leads to burgeoning romance, joyous release, purification, and rebirth. Either way, something big is going to happen.
It’s a bit tougher to get people that worked about rain back in the real world. The notable exception to this rain apathy is informing someone not prepared for rain about the imminent arrival of rain. The reaction is more akin to a string of expletives than movie romance. This is a fair enough response to finding out that you are about to get cold, wet, possibly sick, and with the extra possibility of having some of your possessions damaged. Still, emotion is emotion, we suppose, even if it isn’t singing or dancing.
Depending on where you live, not being prepared for rain isn’t necessarily an option. Rains, manufacturers of waterproof outwear and bags, come from Denmark, where unpredictable weather is a way of life.
When something is a way of life you don’t constantly react to it, you exist with it. Rains garments aren’t the emergency poncho or yellow slicker that you store next to road flares and batteries, they are modern, stylish, functional pieces that don’t just protect the rest of your outfit; they complete it.
Of course, if you’re going to be wearing a good raincoat, watch out for mysterious men handing you envelopes or speaking in cryptic pleasantries. That’s another kind of movie entirely.
