Peacocking at Pret: Showing Face On Campus
It’s around 10:30 A.M on a Tuesday. I’m already drained and my sunglasses are askew on my head even though I know they can’t possibly be because I’ve just left the Quad. Sweat beads on my face and the hollow of my neck in the Miami-esque Philly humidity. Pret is the most conveniently located coffee shop and I find myself both magnetically and exasperatingly drawn to the line threading out of the door because I don’t particularly feel like dishwater-y Starbucks coffee at the moment.
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In fact, I find myself wondering whether Pret is the ‘corporate slop’ coffee of Penn. As the Whartoners spill out of their side door, we are simultaneously bombarded by and in awe of chiffon blouses, Vineyard Vines (unmistakably Penn branded) polo shirts, sky hi-rise jeans in exotic blues from Danube to Tigris, and the occasional City bag in army green slipped on a careless shoulder. The uniform-blue umbrellas serve as a petri dish of high-functioning future executives, entrepreneurs, very few artists, PPE and nursing majors.
Fashion as a collective both unites and divides our student body: I remember about a week or so ago my hallmate heatedly recounting to me that she’d worn sweatpants for the first time to her class and being met with fleeting but judgy glances and even a tentative ‘are you sure everything’s okay?’. At any other school, perhaps, students would be aghast at this reaction. But not fellow Quakers. Even as a freshman beginning my second real month on campus, I’ve seen, experienced, and quickly become sucked into the student collective ideology: dress like you mean to conduct business.
The school’s un-written dress code has its perks (I walk to class feeling like Andy Sachs after her fashion turnaround in the first Devil Wears Prada) and its drawbacks (on the days where I feel disheveled and would like nothing more than to pull on some waffle knit Brandy sweats), but some unseen force always seems to guide me as I pull on high-rise jeans and scrambling to my next class. Forget sweatpants on the weekends as gaggles of girls convene under the umbrellas with iced coffees, gentle hangovers, and Vuori, Alo, and Beyond Yoga sets. Much more snatching than comfortable.
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Despite these micro-style pressures, expression of style serves as almost a motivator for our passionate and ambitious student body. At Penn, fashion acts as a resume far before someone hands over a printed out PDF. Somehow, a choice of a single outfit subtly (or not so subtly) categorizes who is striving for more, who already feels like they belong, and who might be giving up. For a student body fueled by ambition and cold brews, dressing down can feel dangerously close to falling behind. However, there is undeniable power in a shared aesthetic culture of business casual: clothing becomes a deliberate ritual of showing up and preparing oneself for the day.
By the time I finally reach the front of the Pret line, secure my coffee and take that first delectable sip, the chaos of the morning settles like sediment. Adjusting my sunglasses, I step back out under the sea of blue umbrellas and face the day in the only way a Quaker can.
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