Bridget Capobianco, a Brooklyn mother and former boutique owner, was sitting on a playground bench on a Wednesday in early November, wearing shearling-lined clog boots under the gentle patter of a 60-degree rain.

“I was impatient to wear these boots, because I love them, but my feet are sweating like crazy,” Capobianco said.

Eleanor Kriseman, an assistant editor at a large publishing firm in New York, has been relying on a lightweight vintage gray coat, longing to break out her real and extensive fall wardrobe.

“I’ve been drinking iced coffee on the train and trying to make up for maybe perhaps dressing a little too warm,” said Kriseman, who survived “18 years of summer” growing up in Florida, leading her to romanticize back-to-school corduroy and sweaters.

And Albert Lee, a literary agent for Kuhn Projects, has pulled out his sweaters, scarves and heavy trousers for the intermittent brisk days but not yet put away his summer shorts and Save Khaki T-shirts for the balmy ones, creating a space crisis in his small Brooklyn apartment.

“Essentially I’m running out of storage,” Lee wrote in an email. “I imagine California Closets is doing good business, thanks to climate change.”

Fall has long been New York’s proudest season: when its denizens could forget all about the satanic summer, wrap scarves and tweeds around their pasty selves, and get back to the fast, hunched walking that distinguished them from tourists. Women drawn to the thrilling collision of cultural, intellectual and literary mondes here may aspire to dress like Jackie O. in her editor incarnation, striding down Fifth Avenue in a black turtleneck and a heavy wool YSL coat — even if they wound up working in marketing.

But this has been the warmest fall quarter in 25 years. And while many people are concerned with global catastrophe — contemplating harrowing images of Greenland melting away and scorched earth in Los Angeles — others are just spinning wildly, like the confused leaves, to figure out what autumn in New York means for their wardrobes.

The woolen mittens memorialized by Oscar Hammerstein may be languishing on store shelves, but “we sold over 80 units of Dior sunglasses alone in October,” said Elizabeth von der Goltz, a senior vice president and general merchandise manager at Bergdorf Goodman. She herself bought a heavy Burberry cape and hasn’t had call to bust it out since Paris Fashion Week in September.

Although von der Goltz still sees those traditional “upper tier” department store customers who buy their full fall wardrobes in May, and the second tier of wealthy but busy professionals who do a one-stop for their full fall in September, she said there had been a major shift to “a buy now, wear now” model with “special” replacing “seasonal.”

While business for big coats “or any other heavy fabrics in your basic ready-to-wear kicks in later now,” von der Goltz said, “if it’s something special that people think maybe isn’t going to be there later in the season, we do sell those well early.” This year, an Acne shearling jacket, which shipped in June, and a Yves Salomon army coat with fur inside it, both qualified.

Beth Buccini, an owner of the 16-year-old Manhattan boutique Kirna Zabete, preordered a different version of the hot (as in temperature) hot (as in trendy) fur-lined parka, by Mr. and Mrs. Italy, back in May.

“I’m like a psycho next-level planner because I see everything first and I know what I like,” she said. But has she gotten to wear it yet?

“Not one chance,” Buccini said. “Not one!”

Instead, her YSL moto jacket, which she thought wouldn’t get her past Paris Fashion Week, has been trotted out for going on two months.

“I laughed because when I came to work this morning, out of five of us who were standing there, four of us were wearing leather moto jackets,” Buccini said, “and it seemed preposterous that in the middle of November we’re still able to get away with wearing just a little leather jacket. But in this time of global warming, it seems that’s that the new reality.”

Indeed, as the United Nations prepares for its all-too-real climate summit this month, one might fantasize about the eggheads at MIT devising a new discipline — Fashionology-Climatology? — to explain the mystifying algorithms where both rapidly changing systems intersect.

“It’s funny, but resort is actually a huge sweater time because it’s freezing when that ships,” von der Goltz said, referring to one of the industry’s confusing sales periods. “Knitwear and coats are really important in the resort delivery as well, and then, you know, prefall you want to have lighter weight, because that’s in in spring and high summer.”

Buyers say that these “precollections” — formerly done by only a few labels and now widely embraced — have become synonymous with “seasonless,” relied upon more and more to keep revenues up as weather-driven shopping becomes increasingly unpredictable and customers, encouraged by the 24/7 Internet, seek more instant-gratification purchases.

“Heaven knows that you cannot control Mother Nature, and so every season it seems that we buy ‘seasonless’ more,” Buccini said.

With some items, retailers are attempting a mental shift from fall to “fall.”

“Customers want to know they’re getting something new and it’s the new season and it has maybe the feel of fall, but it has to be a weight that they can wear right away,” von der Goltz said. Sleeveless vests, for instance, “look like fall but aren’t really going to keep you warm.”