Clothes make the man
Hud Morgan, Staff Columnist

With the recent passing of Carrie Donovan, the Vogue fashion czar who was notorious for her oversized sunglasses, pearls and flamboyant cameos on Old Navy commercials, I cannot help but think that Ms. Donovan would have been nauseated by the stunted trends and the soporific fashion here at Stanford.

Because even though I grant Californian attire some leeway in the Last Judgement of Fashion, the typical Stanford aesthetic amounts to something far less permissible. Indeed, the sociophysical bubble in which Stanford is beached is exacerbated by our fashion vacuum as well. Had Ms. Donovan entered it by taking a tour of our campus by day or by attending a Greek function by night, she would have found a brazen showcase of misguided style neophytes.

IÕll begin with Stanford females. La moda for girls here is characterized by a timid banality, and this can be attributed to a couple of factors. The first thing that hinders a girlÕs quest to be a fashionista is the idea that Stanford is the alleged antithesis of pretentious SoCal pixieism. Thus, any particularly bewitching outfit that is too material or just too visible will invariably draw disdain from oneÕs contemporaries. The female undergrad must constantly reconcile her desire to look really good with her fear of alienating her peers in the process.

And so ultimately, the daily result of this quandary is an unexciting ensemble with only the occasional token edge-of-the-envelope accessory. A testimony to this phenomenon is that those Euromaidens who prance around in lovely full-body Prada have become notorious for their excess. Thus, excepting the occasional anomaly, imaginative vogue has become subverted by Stanford culture.

Secondly, the physical expanse of our school and the requisite daily intracampus trekking discourages uber-cool footwear sported by, for example, Carrie on Sex and the City, because it is too uncomfortable. Many women would argue that shoes make or break an outfit, and because alluring sandals or stilettos cannot be sported because their treacherousness, girls then allow comfort trump fashion in other areas of their wardrobe as well.

It is also important to draw attention to the prevailing misconception that a silver Tiffany accessory is the perfect ending to an outfit. Girls seem to think that simply because their ensemble includes one piece made by Elsa Perreti, they can get away with fashion murder on the rest of their person. Tiffany is not original, let alone vindication for tragic garb.

There also seems to be a persistent abundance of denim jackets, most notably on the ladies of Pi Beta Phi, ostensibly to achieve an ironic revival look. Team Pi Phi should stop complaining that the weather has gotten so cold if all theyÕre wearing is a jean jacket over a pink tube top. Like, trade that stuff in for some Patagonia.

Males at Stanford are even more careless with their garb. Even if the girls are averse to dressing like conspicuous fashionistas or are restrained by StanfordÕs physical layout, the boys here have no such excuse, and are shamelessly indiscriminate with what they wear. With the exception of the occasional ex-bearded Latin flitting around school in Armani linen shirts and capri pants or the even more rare stubborn ribbon-belt wearing prep schooler, all Stanford males dress as though they are on a boardwalk in New Jersey or San Diego. Sadly, you can take the boy out of the surf...

Further, a formal event in the real world requires that men wear black tie. Also known as a tuxedo. What all of you rented for your razzle-dazzle proms. But at Stanford, the school with a dumbed-down fashion code, a formal entails a shirt and tie. A blazer, which is semiformal in the real world, is not even included in the protocol for a Stanford formal.

And then we have other dominant trends, such as the shorts-cum-pants phenomenon. Nearly every undergraduate male seems to parade around in these transformation trousers, ignoring the fact that they are utilitarian to the point of absurdity. I invented and personally sewed a pair of these combination shorts / pants when I was in first grade for my schoolÕs annual Young Inventors competition, and I finished in last place, so you can imagine how redonkulous I find their recent popularity.

The widespread marvel of the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing brand is equally baffling. The coeds of Stanford have blindly invested hundreds of dollars in AberfrattyÕs cargo pocketed line, and our school is now a homogenous mass of ribbed-sweater clones. Perhaps it is A & FÕs smutty advertising that dupes these boys into thinking that they too can have an orgy with seven blond anorexics if they wear Abercrombie faux-ratty, previously-faded sport shirts. But in truth, if the clothes donÕt even look good on the models—and they donÕt—they certainly wonÕt look good on the plebes.

Then there is the general ignorama that fogs StanfordÕs collective fashion consciousness. So to clarify: Lily Pulitzer is not the woman for whom the Pulitzer Prize is named. Burberry is not a seeded fruit. J. Press is not a subsidiary of J. Crew. Thomas Pink is not a producer living in Malibu.

And then thereÕs always the athlete factor. StanfordÕs campus culture is so dominated by our athletic teams that gray sweatclothing is ubiquitous in the classroom. The most obvious perpetrators are football players, who are so smitten with their extracurricular vocation that they will often don not only a gray Stanford sweatshirt but matching Stanford sweatpants as well, and will then accessorize with a Stanford Cardinal hat. Sweet, call me, you play football. We get it.

The fallacy of the Stanford fashion enterprise cannot be attributed solely to our schoolÕs geographic coordinates, for not all of our student body hails from the left coast. People from the East Coast are perhaps even more culpable than their unwitting western counterparts. Because even though these easterners have always subscribed to a more traditional look, they consciously eschew it once they arrive on the golden shores of California, trading it for generically sloppy "sunwear."

Yes, Jesus Christ wore a loincloth, and has been hailed as mankindÕs salvation, so there are people who will try to argue that clothing is not necessarily commensurate with destiny. Perhaps it is the arrogance of attending a good school; perhaps it is complacency; perhaps it is ignorance: for whatever reason, kids at Stanford donÕt heed the immortal words of Polonius to Laertes: "the apparel oft proclaims the man."

Hud Morgan eagerly anticipates his June return to the international capital of sartorial savvy, New York City.