It feels like we should all be making eye contact with strangers more now that people’s mouths are covered with masks, preventing them from smiling or saying hello. But I think the opposite is true; when I go for walks, I note that in general people are withholding their gaze as well as their smiles and greetings, as if eye contact too could prove perilous.

One thing I enjoy about walking around in a masked world is observing the different masked personae I see people adopting. Around here, I’d say that (appropriately for California), I see a lot of people sporting bandanas with an air of vintage roguishness; that is to say, in a style evocative of nineteenth-century train robbers or other maverick outlaw types.

Another prominent style has a completely opposed vibe: those wearing surgical or N95 respirator style masks have a clinical look.

There are also a surprising number of people sporting what I think of as the “Arctic explorer” look, which is particularly peculiar-looking in the springtime in Los Angeles (it’s sunny and in the 70s here). These masquers usually have their collar turned up and a scarf bundled around their faces.

I’d characterize my own masked persona as slightly disheveled boho (the disheveled part is mostly because my hair (which is longer, I think, than it’s ever been in my adult life) is always getting tangled up in my mask ties. My look also has a whiff of ’70s-heiress-taken-hostage-develops-Stockholm-syndrome-robs-bank.

Here’s a fuller list of masked personae, if you’re looking for a style to make your own:

• Arctic explorer
• bandit
• belly dancer
• bride
• dancer of seven veils
• Darth Vader
• deep sea diver
• executioner
• fencer
• gladiator
• harlequin
• hostage
• highwayman/woman
• knight
• niqābīah
• phantom of the opera
• plague doctor
• seventeenth-century French prisoner, possibly royal
• surgeon
• superhero or supervillain
• train-robber
• Venetian masquerader
• World War II evacuee

And if you need some visual inspiration for how to pull off glamorous masquery, behold the following nunnish, Orientalist, and robberish variations:

Ooh, and here’s another, which Christian Siriano tweeted. I especially like this one because it looks like the mannequin has bubbles all over her face:

In fact, it’s quite difficult to distinguish Siriano’s design from a house of Kareem original, made long before masks were in vogue: