Walk the Line
A trek up or down Locust Walk reveals Penn’s neutral, professional fashion style.
Each time I walk by someone with a red, suede-bottom JanSport backpack, I feel embarrassed. I try not to look the person in the eye. I hope no one notices.
I arrived at the beginning of the year without a backpack because I didn’t know what kind of bag you lug around in college, especially at a school like Penn. Over 20,000 students from around the country and world. The fifth largest city in the U.S. I expected to see a wide gamut of clothing choices and decided it would be best to choose my backpack once on campus.
Yet as I perused the crowds on Locust Walk during those late August days, I could only find about five different brands of bags strapped on peoples’ backs. Herschel, North Face, Fjallraven Kanken, SWISSGEAR, JanSport. Despite trying to choose one with the most vintage look, I ended up buying a backpack within these categories and see duplicates every day.
“The reward is attention and self-expression,” journalist John Seabrook writes about choosing between clothing brands in his article Nobrow Culture. “The risk is that your identity will be overmediated by your investment and you will become like everyone else.”
To be fair, looking like everyone else at Penn isn’t much of an insult. This is a school where suits outnumber sweatpants, where student entrepreneurs are fashion designers as well as app developers. But perhaps that is part of the challenge? As a fashion forward student body, most of us hunt for the latest fashion trends, most of us wear the same trends, most of us wear the same things.
“I think though there isn’t a uniform, people conform to certain standards [at Penn]. You certainly have the preppy look. There certainly is an edgy contingent that wears all black,” Alex Fisher, freshman in the College, said. “There are definitely moments when it can be bit frustrating when people are all wearing the same things.”
Watch your Back
The North Face, Fjallraven Kanken, Herschel, JanSport and SWISSGEAR are the most commonly seen backpacks at Penn.
What may cause frustration, at least for me, is this notion that by not being different is failing to be original, failing to be individual. Cool is said to diffuse from the innovators, to the early adopters to the early majority and finally to the late majority, as journalist Malcolm Gladwell describes in his famous essay, The Coolhunt.
Whereas in our old hometowns and high schools it may have been easy to be the innovators, here at Penn there can only be so many, and determining who first brought back flair jeans versus who adopted them early on may not be so straightforward. To always know what clothing is one step ahead of the current trends, and buy it, requires an amount of time and energy college students may lack.
“We (college students) have other things to worry about than just buying clothes,” Emily Smith, sophomore in the College, said.
Smith transferred to Penn from the University of Miami, and said at each school, students dress from a limited number of trends and brands. The major distinction is in the collective style of the universities, she said. Whereas in UMI they all wore similar swimsuits and shorts, here students tend to wear similar coats and boots.
“I think Penn compared to a lot of Ivies is a very neutral school; we don’t really wear that much color,” Emma Craig, senior in the College, said. “When I think of Ivies, I think of pastels, salmon, Easter egg whatever. But looking at our campus, because I think we have Wharton, we are very much black and white and gray. I just think it is very Penn.”
Besides the buildings on campus, surrounding stores like Urban Outfitters, American Apparel and Gap can determine clothing choices when students only have time to go shopping between classes at nearby stores. Case in point, though I wanted to find a backpack that was “different” I caved into the convenience of Eastern Mountain Sports a few blocks away and bought the JanSport as evidently many others did as well.
Elena Song, team leader at the local Urban Outfitters, believes that even without the convenience, however, the store would still be popular, noting Philadelphia youth, employees, and tourists shop there too.
“When people come here to Penn, they already know about Urban from their hometowns,” Song said. “I just think the clothes are pretty cool. We do weekly trend updates, collaborations with brands. We have a lot of basics and a lot of exclusive [clothing].”
Loyalty to merchandisers also prevails online, where students likely buy from the brands they know or notice others wearing. Studying Communication and Consumer Psychology, Craig said the draw of familiarity comes up often in discussions about consumer choice.
Fall Basics
This season’s most popular items among Penn students come in a palette of olive green, brown, black, beige and jewel tones.
“As humans it is only natural that we are attracted to things we know. They are safe,” Craig said. “If there is a certain brand or style that is accepted, people will naturally want that.”
But by giving certain brands value and loyalty, consumers may have become what some call brand-obsessed. Stand in the front of a Penn lecture hall, and sea of Apple logos will stare back at you.
“I think Penn, as well, is a very label driven school,” Fisher said. “People tend to be pretty showy about wearing certain brands.Beyond just Adidas and Nike, I see a lot of Moncler, Barbour. I’m sure Canada Goose soon.”
Smith and Fisher agree part of the challenge in getting past labels is most stores in Philadelphia are brand names, saying there are few independent retailers near campus and in Center City. Fisher said this is especially true for menswear, which he feels is limited already.
“I think there are limited options in how you can express your style in menswear,” Fisher said. “I’m pretty happy with the options I personally have. I can blend some pieces that are pretty traditional with some that are a bit uncommon. I’m not trying to radically change up the game or anything, but I do have some autonomy.”
With no guarantee of Philadelphia’s shopping scene changing soon, Fisher believes part of the responsibility of creating individual style rests on the individual.
“I think just, it is a cultural thing, but getting past labels,” Fisher said. “I think some do this very successfully, and they can blend something they got at a thrift store with something from a very nice boutique. I think that is very exciting.”
Yet even in the search for individuality, there are some clothing items almost everyone wears and loves. Jeans, for example, are worn by the masses but are often associated with personal freedom.
“Desires to be oneself does not mean the desire to be fundamentally different from everyone else but rather to situate individual differences within a communal allegiance,” media scholar John Fiske writes in his chapter, “The Jeaning of America.”
The Hunt for Boots
Rainy days bring out the rainbow of Hunter boots on campus. “I just think as a standard, everyone always wears boots [here]. Coming from the West Coast, I had no idea how to dress for any kind of weather ever. I was so confused; I had no coat, no boots,” College senior Emma Craig said. “But now that I have been here for four years, I have figured it out, I think.”
Penn is this community, and for many of its students, part of the college experience is embracing the fashion the campus and city offer. Bryan Rutto, College freshman from Kenya, said he has to make adjustments to his wardrobe mainly due to the colder climate.
“I think at Penn you can keep to whatever [clothes] you want, but you also have to adapt to the weather,” Rutto said. “Maybe you are seeing more brands offered to you, and you want to try new stuff?”
Craig also faced a cultural shift when moving from California to Philadelphia. Competing in athletics, she spent most of her days in yoga pants and Penn-wear during her first two years running from practice to class. Once she stopped competing during her third year of college, Craig said she finally had the chance to fully adopt East Coast style.
“Personally, I don’t think I ever felt pressured [to dress a certain way], but I felt that I wanted to look like everyone else,” Craig said. “I felt like being here amongst these kinds of people, I wanted to look like I belonged here, and the easiest way to do that is by looking like everyone else.”
In addition to sports, Craig believes the specific school one attends and the time of year can influence style.
“There are definitely times of the year where there are a lot of recruiting going on…it’s nuts. Everyone looks like they are running to a meeting,” Craig said. “There is a certain intensity. It is a very different vibe.”
To an extent, Penn’s style is persistently professional, both in the classroom and in the closet. As long as students remain ambitious in success and trend chasing, we all just might look somewhat fashionably similar.
“Obviously, we all are under the same stresses and in the positions where we want the same kind of jobs coming out of here. We want high power jobs,” Craig said. “I think it is that like mindedness and drive that is consistent among all aspects in our lives, including how we dress. We all come from very different backgrounds, and this is not to say we lose a sense of who we are, but we have a vibe that makes us Penn students.”
—Emily Cieslak
Images courtesy of Flickr, Pinterest, Pinterest and Pinterest.
Sources cited: Seabrook, John “Nobrow Culture” New Yorker, Sept 20, 1999, Gladwell, Malcolm. 1997. “The Coolhunt.” New Yorker. March 17, John Fiske, “The Jeaning of America” in Understanding Popular Culture.