The photo above is from my mother's 1968 yearbook.
Button down shirts and chinos, well fitted suits, crew neck sweaters, pencil and pleated skirts, cardigans, horn tipped glasses, and the all important penny loafers on both sexes. Some of the women (although none can be seen here) would have been in slacks, and it would have looked polished and put together. Nowadays we associate these looks with the "prep" trend, but we should really be considering it more in the sense of "Ivy" style. I've explored what I think the value is in "prep," but I think it's necessary to explain why the absence of "Ivy" in specific and the absence of style appropriateness in general is actually having a negative impact on students that becomes manifest after graduation and upon entrance into the professional working world. Young men and women scramble to build a work wardrobe they don't have and don't know how to wear.
This photo represents the end of an era. The 1970s would find the hippie aesthetic take over campuses, and although hair would vary with year and generation, style choices would become less and less formal, until today, I often feel overdressed in my courses, where even some of the graduate students (let alone the undergraduates) show up in a uniform of t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops (or worse, camisole, pajama bottoms, and slippers). Compare the above photo to a university library today. I'm all for comfortable study attire but...
What the hell happened?
Unfortunately, we started thinking of schools first as places primarily of social change, but not of places with a work ethic. Educational institutions should be places of social change, but they should still be primarily places of learning, and places where hard work and professionalism are rewarded. We've stopped treating educational institutions as a work environment. This is problematic, and our undergraduate and graduate sense of "style" (read: inappropriate) is a microcosm that is useful for exploring the issue of why professionalism seems to be lacking in our classrooms.
Now, this raises the question, have we become less professional because we stopped dressing professionally, and developed a different outlook on the campus versus the outlook we have towards the office that we do dress up for? Or was it that we stopped viewing the educational institution as a place where professionalism was required and therefore began to show that viewpoint by no longer dressing professionally? It's probably a chicken and the egg sort of question, and the answer is somewhere in the middle, and the two probably feed on each other and are therefore self-reinforcing. The only way to break the cycle is dress for school the way you would dress for work in an office. Dress like how you imagine you would have to dress for your dream job; don't dress as if you simply need the bare minimum to "wait" school "out."
Anyone who reads fashion or style blogs, anyone who cares about their appearance, and pretty much most people who've ever had to do something "professional" (including high school and college students) understands that a well put together outfit can literally change your feelings and perceptions. We don't just look our best to impress our interviewers, guests, or authority figures, we also look our best because it makes us feel our best, and it makes us react differently when we do. There is a reason why most speech/interview coaches advise you to wear professional attire even when doing a phone interview. The person on the other end wouldn't know if you were in a robe and Donald Duck slippers, but you will, and your speech behavior will actually mimic your level of dress appropriateness.
This is why it is so important for there to be informal "dress codes" for educational institutions, at least by the junior high school level. While I support formal dress codes as well (but only if they are gender neutral, any item in the dress code should be able be worn by students, which means, yes, if boys want to wear skirts, as long as they do it seriously and adhere to the rules, they should be able to. In most cases young women are already allowed to wear slacks), I recognise that professional style does have a range that allows for variance. This means that we should have "dress codes" that emphasise key pieces that are generally and widely recognised as "work-appropriate" and we should strive to explain to students the proper places in which such attire is worn. This should be a segment within the "life skills" courses many high schools and junior high schools are now teaching (which have replaced the heavily gendered, if not outright sexist, "home economics" courses of the past).
By the time students get to the university level, they should be treating each course (even 8:00 am courses) as "business meetings." While it is true that universities, especially in the United States, are getting more and more expensive, and there is a trend to treat students as "customers," these are excuses often used as ideas to promulgate a view that presents professors not as "meeting leaders" but as "servants," who are to educational institutions what cashiers are to a department store; there for the sole purpose of delivering the "product" to the students who have "paid" for it. The problem is, despite the fact that tuition costs are indeed payment, they are payment for opportunity, but not for outcome. The "pay" a student receives for doing the work is twofold- the knowledge attained, and the signifier of the knowledge attained (grades awarded or degrees conferred). In this way, the classroom has been, and should be considered still, a work environment where the student does the work, and is paid accordingly. It should be seen as a training ground for eventual career behavior.
Which brings us back to the need to reestablish appropriate style choices among students, and why the "Ivy" style is useful as a benchmark. The elements of Ivy specifically are not as relevant here as the general idea of dressing comfortably yet in pieces that are understood to be "professional." There are a couple of "rebel" actions you can get away with, and that is where your "I'm a student, this is a training environment!" nonchalance can be touted.
Honestly, all it really takes for men (or for women!) to look really put together is a couple of staples:
Here's a Brooks Brothers Oxford Cloth Button Down (OCBD) in standard collegiate stripe (white and blue). You really can get away with only a few colors. If you only have three colors, it should be white, blue, and the blue collegiate stripe. Others I have show cased on this blog are pink (and pink/white collegiate), green (and green/white collegiate), and probably the next color to round out a simple collection would be a yellow. Both F.E. Castleberry and I have spoken about the quality of American Living's button downs, I am really happy with the quality, the fit, and the price point of their OCBDs. You don't need to break the bank. Watch for deals and you can walk away with these shirts for around $15 each. Treat them well, and they'll last for years.
Then throw on some simple chinos/khakis, like this pair from Deco. Nothing fancy. No pleats (maybe a coin pocket or a pair with a back flap pocket if you're feeling like a little flare). Place a nice grosgrain, ribbon, or brown leather belt on (here I have a grosgrain belt from US Polo Assn). Not too tight, make it relaxed enough so your chinos/khakis fit across the hips comfortably (if your chinos/khakis would fall off without a belt, they're too big. If you can't breath, they're too tight) without bunching somewhere.
Dress it up by throwing on a pair of brown loafers or oxfords, here I am wearing Bass Weejuns. Make it rebellious by not putting on socks. Make it lighter by using white bucks, still without socks. Dress it down by putting on brown Sperry's. Make it fun by putting on colored Sperry's.
Ladies may choose to use heels or ballet flats, but be conservative. Nothing like a lady in some serious masculine shoes!
Add a navy blue blazer (not so good right now for outside temperatures, but useful to have when the air conditioning in buildings is so high that you'd freeze without it) and you will be better dressed than anyone else in your class. You may well be better dressed than the professor!
Classic LIFE photo of a young lady repping the Brooks Brothers OCBD. I wanted to go with something a bit more modern as well, but I simply wasn't able to find pictures of the ladies without 1) using really crappy model shots from seller websites or 2) taking proprietary pictures from other bloggers. I refuse to do either. Maybe I'll try to take some pictures of some ladies out on campus.
Most of you already know this stuff, and those of you who are still in an educational institution probably don't benefit much from this post. The idea is to share it with others and rebuild an academic and professional style that treats schools like work environments. Let your peers know that taking even the few minutes to throw on something as simple as the above shows respect for their work as professionals-in-training, their professors as professionals, and will serve to help them bridge the transition from youth to working adulthood, and with that change in outlook, perhaps our educational institutions will see a rise in quality of student, quality of behavior, and quality of perception.
