There’s plenty of places your brain could go when you think of fashion. You’re probably envisioning runway models, sultry advertisements, and price tags far out of the range of a typical college student’s wildest dreams. Faraway dreams of a Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle are easy to get wrapped up in when you believe that dressing “fashionably” is unattainable.
It’s not unattainable for everyone, as I learned pretty quickly when I came to USC. Here in the land of $200 sweatpants, it’s pretty safe to say that dropping names in conversation is just as popular as plastering them to your clothes.
But I’m not here to rant about the spoiled kids who have no sense of value. Actually, I’ve grown to look past labels that signify more worth than my life savings.
Another thing I’ve learned in the past two years is that this isn’t fashion at all. I mean, yes, it is. But there’s so much more to the term than the immediate connotation of the 1 percent.
Fashion is literally everywhere. We all have our own fashion. Our individual senses of style. And there’s probably someone out there reading this who’s scoffing at thinking ‘yeah, right. I truly could not care less about what I put on my body.’ But that’s just it. Regardless if you care or not, our appearance dictates others’ first impressions of us.
We all wake up and make a choice what clothes we are going to put on our bodies. Maybe, as we rummage through our closets, we have the intention of presenting ourselves to fit a narrative or create a personality. We might aim to look polished, mature, elegant, spunky, dark, athletic, creative. Or maybe we don’t have this intention. Maybe we don’t care about the way we look. It doesn’t matter what the clothes look like, as long as they’re comfortable, practical, appropriate. And maybe we don’t realize that this is also a choice we are making about how we bare our thoughts and values on our skin for the world view.
So while some of us think little about our senses of style, others are opposite. Dressing ourselves is an artform—and our bodies are the canvases. There are so many individuals on our campus who use fashion as a way to express themselves and their creativities. I want to use my blog to chronicle these people and their styles that I see in passing on the way to class or as I drink my coffee at Starbucks in the morning. I want to share with others how beautiful fashion can be, but more importantly, the personalities behind the clothes.
dressed for class 