Uninformed Disunity

By late September, things have become routine. We’ve settled into our new dorms, reacquainted ourselves with our term-time friends, and counted down the days as the add/drop period creeps toward its end; as these habits sink in, a couple of changes occur on campus. The 100-degree heat that Cambridge felt in our absence departs, and we get eased into a lull of grays, oranges, and auburn browns characteristic of a Northeast fall.

I’ve come to appreciate the term “sweater weather” as temperatures dwindle to a cool sub-70. Away go the jorts, tank tops, and baseball caps of the summers spent in New York, London, or San Diego. Instead, the jeans come out to play, and the Yard is adorned with spools of blue on every student’s behind. White patterned sneakers, adidas Sambas, white socks, and a dark coat constitute the average Harvard student’s October wardrobe.

Casual wear to class was one of the biggest changes I experienced when I arrived at Harvard as a first-year. Growing up in the United Kingdom, I wore a suit and tie as my school uniform for as long as I can remember. At boarding school, there was a time when I owned only one properly fitting T-shirt, as my days were filled with routine classes, formals, and sports activities, with little downtime that warranted everyday clothes.

I was thankful for this. I always felt that uniforms masked socioeconomic inequalities between students and removed the pressure of putting together a stellar outfit every day. The suit was navy, black, or gray. The dress shirt? White, pink, or powder blue, with a befitting tie to top it all off. Dressing was simple. Without this enforcement, I surely would have struggled to find five unique outfits every week.

Uniforms didn’t come without downsides. Unpolished shoes? Sent back to your dorm to polish them. Flamboyant belt? Labeled non licet, Latin for “not permitted,” to be replaced with a black or brown leather one. At a British boarding school, forced uniformity stripped clothing of its storytelling abilities. Which, yes, in some ways removed people’s visual personality, but it also disguised who came from money and who didn’t. At Harvard, with no enforced uniform, clothes are free to talk.

The Harvard undergraduate population has representatives from every U.S. state and countless countries. And though our fall apparel is largely uniform, the clothes that make us fit together also expose our differences.

The North Face in particular has become a staple for many. Its black Nuptse puffer is thoroughly loved and routinely drapes across the seatbacks of Science Center Hall B for EC1010A. Their backpacks are nearly as common in the Yard as international tourists.

But The North Face isn’t made for college students. The American outerwear company’s name reflects its purpose—it’s designed for climbers facing the harsh terrain of a mountain’s cliff face. Why do we, as students in the urban Northeast, equip ourselves with outerwear that exceeds our needs? We dress for the person we’d like to be, rather than for what we need. Clothing helps us convey an illusion and wear a mask for those around us.

But why would we choose to dress similarly? Fashion is largely characterized by a set of rules. Some things we shouldn’t put together, and some things catch the eye in ways we want and don’t. Poorly fitting jeans. Patterns that look like stains. Purple and yellow? Simply atrocious.

Still, fashion is also about taking risks. Doing something novel and unconventional that pays off in the final display. But Harvard students, known for being the fastest to abandon prior world-changing dreams in favor of high-paying corporate jobs, are naturally risk-averse. We don’t love to stick out, be questioned, or be critiqued. And it shows in our clothing choices.

Characteristics of our student body show up at every level, from the most pre-professional club culture to how we respond to campus politics. This includes the clothes in our wardrobes. The same golden handcuffs that will one day keep us in high-paying jobs already prevent us from taking creative risks with what we wear. Instead of expressing ourselves and displaying our backgrounds, we wear the mask of an identity that isn’t our own.

Harvard has great jeans. Or genes. I think.

The uniform isn’t as uniform as it seems at first. If you stare at the jeans and really fix your eyes upon their textures, you’ll realize they aren’t all the same. Indeed, there’s a raging sea of blues. But not of one shade. Let’s walk through it. The people’s choice? A regular pair of blue jeans. With a hoodie or a white tee, it gives ’00s vibes, like digital cameras and your favorite R&B album. Next up, the light blue denim. The new kid on the block. Best paired with white tennis shoes, sometimes Reeboks, Lacostes, or even a colorful pair of Sambas. Others go for a navy pair, which works well with black sneakers and a waffle sweater or rugby polo (a personal favorite of mine).

As for brands, Harvard students source their jeans from all over. Fast-fashion retailers like Zara and Hollister have long been reliable sources for students to find their go-to pieces. However, more niche online sellers, like Aimé Leon Dore and Kith, have proliferated, using social media marketing and limited-stock drops to build a following. Beyond these, many students have started dropping jeans altogether. Yes, it’s true: the sea of blue is often littered with dress pants, corduroys, or chinos from Loro Piana or J.Press.

Look more closely, and our clothing is less unified than it may seem at first. Take cowboy boots, a staple of the American South, developed as practical footwear for cattle rearing and farm work. You can spot boots on some of the Texans who call campus home; yet you would be hard-pressed to find many who do farm work day to day. Boots were made for the work of those who wear them, just like The North Face was made for the mountain that almost none of us plan on climbing. One is a statement on where you’re from. The other declares who you’d like to be.

Athleisure isn’t foreign to campus either. College-branded Nike Tech Fleeces and sweatpants are an easy choice for warmth and comfort as we head into the colder fall months. More notably, the athlete backpack sends a message to onlookers, especially when combined with a HiBoy (electric scooter)—a fashion statement we all know very well. Whether athletes represent another class of students is a question best entertained in another article. But their clothing speaks loudly and clearly.

In LS1A, two students sit comfortably, not too upright, nor too slouched, in casual outfits you couldn’t tell apart at first glance. But take a closer look, and you will see a story of generational challenges, contrasting lived experiences, and vastly different life choices shaped by these disparate environments. I often find myself in conversations about how our backgrounds shape the Harvard experience and what we take away from it. I’ve found that in our clothing and appearance, we make a broader, subtler statement to start a dialogue that only some are fluent in reading.

And yet, they sit side by side in Lamont, studying for the upcoming Gen Ed quiz. Both in sneakers and knit sweaters, the differences still show through. The masks we wear fit worse than we think.

Wisdom Omolayo ’29 (wisdom_omolayo@college.harvard.edu) is comping the “Harvard Independent” and will be spending his Sunday night recapping the two STAT110 lectures he slept through last week.