Uni Uniform: Dressing as a College Student, Reexamined

Thom Browne is quoted as saying, “I think it is so liberating, and so individual in a way. I think it takes a lot of confidence to be able to be that true to a uniform.” Rick Owens, when coming out at the end of his fashion shows to wave goodbye to the inevitably vast crowd of spectators assembled, has historically been seen to wear virtually the same things - a t-shirt or tank top, a pair of baggy shorts, and a pair of his signature chunky black sneakers. Daniel Roseberry, creative director of Schiaparelli, is hard to track down on the internet wearing anything other than black or blue denim. Steve Jobs famously wore a uniform of cool gray New Balances, blue Levi’s 501 jeans, and a black Issey Miyake turtleneck. Maybe it’s time for college students to do something similar.

The tech-side of people that wear uniforms - virtually the same thing every day - do it for a reason which I’m not sure is pseudoscience or not: to conserve cognitive decision-making energy. On the other hand, fashion creatives tend to do so for two reasons: they know what they feel good wearing, and they want to focus on making others look beautiful through their clothes - not themselves. Wearing a uniform is not an ascetic choice - on the contrary, it can be “liberating and individual”, according to Thom Browne. More broadly, the uniform is meant to be anti-trend - an immovable object of style stubbornly resistant to algorithm-manufactured fads, more authentic and coincidentally, more efficient. Maybe instead of letting trends, fashion houses, and ultimately other people dictate what we wear, we can find what we like and embrace it. This is not, by any means, an argument for an unchanging wardrobe - but it is an argument for minimized consumption in favor of a thoughtfully repetitive wardrobe.

Beyond such philosophical understandings of fashion, there is a practical side to uniform, the side championed by tech bros the world over. Wearing a uniform can provide a safe sense of consistency and stability in one’s life, one that eliminates the mental drain associated with trend-obsession as well as the financial drain. I would argue that, as college students, it is especially important to minimize these factors. Many of us don’t have jobs. We have enormous amounts of varying work, and we have relatively cramped spaces to live in. I doubt it is a unique feeling to find yourself clambering for the correct t-shirt to go with the pair of jeans you already put on (one which, unfortunately, happens to be dirty right now, leaving you with only the second choice of a top that goes with jeans of an entirely different color), only to realize that the shoes that go with this outfit take too long to put on in order to make it on time to your 10:15 class across campus (it’s 10:09). Simplification and prioritization would solve this issue, solve the issue of having half of your side of the dorm covered in loose shoes, solve the issue of ever, really, having nothing to wear.

*Steve Jobs, photograph courtesy of* *Cnet.com*

A universal uniform seems to be a panacea for college wardrobe confusion - maybe it’s time to start selling on Depop instead of buying, to wear the same shoes four days in a row, to get yourself one perfect pair of jeans that just can’t go wrong.

Featured photo credit of European Pressphoto Agency.