(See what we did there? Like the love child of ‘Got milk’ and ‘You’ve been tangoed’)
Laura Reynolds looks at the hype surrounding the collaboration.
Just a week to go until the man in red arrives...
Now neither of these events may seem particularly worthy of precious Yorker column inches, however, they did lead me to start wondering how two people, who couldn’t have been more different if they tried, had known from one quick glance that I was a student.
There were no giveaway signs; I wasn’t carrying any books, nor was I wearing a tell-tale college hoody. I looked, if anything, more like I’d just spoken to Michael Fish who’d assured me that snow was on the way. I was so wrapped up against the elements, I could have been wearing a ball gown beneath my layers for all they knew. Yet, know they did and I’m determined to figure out how…
Now, according to my grandmother you aren’t a real student unless you have primary coloured hair and adamantly refuse to sew the gaping holes in your jeans; a quick survey of campus suggests this no longer holds true. What is evident, however, is that it is perhaps more a case of what you’re not wearing that what you are.
You are not, for example, in any kind of uniform, dressed professionally or carrying an indicative implement such as a set of ladders. Nor are you aligning yourself with any particular social group other than generic ‘young person’. You are tracksuit free thus you are not a Chav and you do not appear unnecessarily emotional thus you cannot be Emo. I may be generalising here but you get the idea.
So if there is not a single universal style of dressing amongst students then perhaps the key lies in the individual items which contribute to our daily outfits. Back to an analysis of campus clothing and it appears that whilst there are a wide variety of different ‘looks’, it is surprisingly easy to discern the components which are common to the majority.
Everywhere I looked I saw jeans, converse and scarves: the Holy Trinity of campus fashion. Seriously, have a look next time you’re shambling from the library to Costcutters and you’ll soon see that everyone, irrespective of course or gender, is sporting at least two, if not all, of these options. Why have I never noticed this before? It seems that when we’re together there is anonymity in numbers and it’s only when we become separated from the herd that we can be singled out by the general public as students.
Having said all this, however, it might just have been the fact that I was aimlessly wandering around town in the middle of the day that gave me away.
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