What’s the Worst-Dressed City in America?
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Alaska is known for its panoramic views, diverse wildlife and stunning mountaintops peaked with snow. What it takes to stay warm and safe among those wild animals and frigid temperatures, however, has earned the residents of the state’s most populous city a dubious distinction.
Anchorage, Alaska, has been rated America’s least stylish city. The flannel shirts, heavy parkas and furry ear covers common in the far north city were too much for the readers of Travel + Leisure magazine who participated in the magazine’s annual online poll ranking U.S. cities.
Poll participants were asked to rate 35 cities on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest. The total scores were then averaged and rounded to the nearest hundredth. In the ” Stylish” category, Anchorage scored dead last among non-residents with a score of 3.06.
“It’s not uncommon to see oversized parkas with fur-lined hoods and bunny boots, and people aren’t alarmed when a person wearing a ski mask enters a room,” Dr. Miriam Jones, a paleoclimatologist who spent two years studying in Alaska, told the magazine.
Ranking not far behind Anchorage in the magazine’s fashion “no” list is another city with a cold climate, Salt Lake City, Utah, followed by a more moderate climate locale, Baltimore, Md., whose residents may not have anyone or anything to blame but themselves for their ranking.
Rounding out the top six on the least-stylish list are Orlando, Fla., where residents can blame the tourists that invade their city dressed for Mickey Mouse and not the runway, and the Texan cities of San Antonio and Dallas, proving that everything is bigger in Texas, even bad fashion.
Taking a bad rap for the way they are portrayed on TV are the citizens of Atlanta who were deemed the nation’s seventh-least-stylish citizens thanks to a certain quintet of as-seen-on-TV stars.
“If the flashy reality-TV stars of The Real Housewives of Atlanta are at all indicative of how the rest of Atlanta dresses, it’s no wonder our readers ranked it as America’s No. 7 least-stylish city,” Travel + Leisure writes on its website. “Hotlanta has one of the highest per-capita incomes of any southern city, but as the TV show illustrates and the saying goes: money can’t buy taste.”
On the other end, the best-dressed cities list stretches from coast to coast and north to south, and includes even a city surrounded by water.
New York City ranked number one with a near-perfect score of 4.56, followed by San Juan, Puerto Rico, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Representing the South in a surprisingly high finish is the city of Savannah with a score of 4.32 from the magazine’s readers.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio