Streetwear and street work: the fashion hustle

Talk of the Quad: Bowdoin Bachelors and Bachelorettes

I have recently found a new solace for my brain in Bowdoin’s constant parade of raucous academia: “The Bachelor.” This is not my first interaction with ABC’s reality dating show where one person simultaneously dates 25 roommates in a month long scramble to find love. I attempted to get on the bandwagon last year, but found myself unable to stomach the premise. For me, it represented a total abandoning of healthy relationships and finding real love. One year later, I decided to give it a shot, recognizing that despite the tag as “reality television,” this is not how life works. However, as I watch more and more episodes, I have begun to notice ways in which the scripted Bachelor/Bachelorette culture of romance has seeped into reality, even here at Bowdoin.
Upon reviewing candidates on seasons of both the Bachelor and the Bachelorette, there is only one true constant: they are all wickedly good-looking people. While this makes for more profitable TV, it reinforces the narrative that the most important factor in any sort of romantic relationship, from making out to marriage, is physical attraction. I think that it is safe to say that there is not a ton of emotional discovery on the shows. By the time contestants are proposing, they have spent maybe five hours of one-on-one time together.
While I don’t believe that the Bachelor/Bachelorette are the social artifacts that drive the core of our romantic culture here at Bowdoin, the framework of these shows provides an extreme that can make our own behaviors a little more apparent. While most of the people here aren’t planning on going from meeting to matrimony in five short weeks, there is a culture of romance that relies disproportionately on the physical, and sidelines any sort of emotional connection as an added bonus.
The first time I became aware of this at Bowdoin was a Friday night out last year. Personally, I really value weekend nights and going out as an opportunity to meet new people and maybe to spend more time getting to know my smile-n-wavers: people that I’ve been introduced to and say hello to, but have never actually talked to. I was in a basement and saw someone spill their drink all over one of my smile-n-wavers. I went up to ask if she was alright, and she cut me off in the middle of my inquiry to give me the once over before informing me that she was “not interested in hooking up with me.” At the time I was largely thrown off and walked away, because this person apparently had a very goal-driven night.
Except perhaps the brusqueness, I don’t think that this is a wholly uncommon interaction here. I think that people view their nights out as a condensed version of the Bachelor, where the goal is to find love through physical attraction. The fact that the first thing this person thought was happening when someone approached her was that they were swooping in for some undisclosed physical mouth assault is troubling. Dating and romance were things that had never crossed my mind with regards to this person. Her once-over scan deemed me not a physically apt enough candidate to engage in any sort of romance.
What is troubling here is that I believe that there are huge parts of attraction that originate in people’s personalities, their humor and whether you enjoy being around them. I don’t want to deny that being physically attracted to someone is important in physical intimacy and that there are plenty of physically intimate situations that don’t necessitate a deep emotional connection. But I think that approaching your romantic life based solely on a lustful desire of pure physical attraction is really damaging. Many people go into spaces that have potential for finding some iteration of romance, filter out potential partners based on the presence, or lack thereof, of immediate attraction, and hope that perhaps over a conversation at breakfast the following morning they might find some emotional overlap.
Additionally, although my experiences as a straight male have been with women here at Bowdoin, this is absolutely a phenomenon that goes in all directions. I honestly don’t think that any group is necessarily guiltier than another, and that everyone could benefit from thinking about this a little more.
I believe that many more people could find the sorts of relationships they are looking for if, as a campus, we separate ourselves from considering the Bachelor/Bachelorette as television that represents reality. Thinking someone is physically attractive may not have any bearing on what one looks for in relationships (most people choose friends, people they like spending time with, based on traits other than physical attractiveness). But looking for someone who you emotionally connect with, and finding that attractive, will most probably result in a stronger foundation for anything from a hook-up to a committed relationship.
Simon Cann is a member of the Class of 2019.

Talk of the Quad: Growing up mixed

Every now and then someone will ask me where I am from and I’ll tell them that I’m from Baltimore. One of two reactions follow. Either my questioner will hesitantly accept the answer and walk away or they’ll try again. “But where are you really from?” I’ll then answer with the response I know that they are seeking. “My mom is Indian and my dad is Scottish.”
My mom was born in New York City to two Indian parents. She has spent many childhood summers in India, but she has lived in the United States for almost all of her life. My dad was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew up in Jamaica and Canada but has also lived in the United States for most of his life. My mom has brown (Indian-looking) skin. My dad has pale, white skin. My skin looks somewhere in between, as one might expect. When I am standing next to both my parents, my skin tone makes sense to people. However, without them around, people tend to get confused. Throughout elementary, middle and high school, I’ve been called a variety of ethnicities and nationalities, ranging from Australian to Greek to half black to Chilean.
My ethnicity also drew friends and peers to call me more offensive names. My middle school self bore the brunt of the attack. In the sixth and seventh grades, many of my friends called me “paky” and “pakmule,” implying that I was from Pakistan. In eighth grade, most of my friends switched over to calling me “half-breed.” By high school, my friends learned that these names were not socially acceptable and they stopped using them for the most part. However, as a freshman on the JV soccer team, a group of the sophomores thought it would be funny to start calling me “terrorist” at practice. This only lasted for a couple weeks, fortunately.
Being mixed had its benefits too. Friends would express their jealousy of my year-round tan. And, despite some of the offensive names I was called, I generally found people’s confusion at my skin color rather amusing and in middle school I learned to make a game out of it. I’d tell people that I was half Polynesian and half Aboriginal Australian. I’d make up ethnicities and nationalities. After I took World Cultures in seventh grade, I started telling people I was from Mughal (as in the Mughal Empire). I’d tell people that I was white and just had an intense tan because I went to sailing camp. Some people were more gullible than others, but I could usually get away with most of my responses.
Once I learned that I could convince people that I was fully white, I often found myself hiding the fact that I was half-Indian. I knew that my fellow peers thought that all Indians were small and weak and worked exclusively at convenient stores or as dentists. I didn’t want this association, so instead of trying to convince my people that this wasn’t true of all Indians, I chose to hide my background. I got pretty good at this. I would try my best to hide my multi-compartmental metal lunch container (from India) under the table. I would quickly eat the idlis my mom would sometimes pack me so no one would ask me about them. I would never correct people’s mispronunciation of my name in order to avoid explaining where it is from.
In retrospect, I am not proud of hiding my background. I’m proud of my mixed heritage, but it took me a while to understand that I could be proud of my mixed heritage. Only very recently have I stopped pushing back against my Indian background and started to embrace it. This summer I will be living in India with my family for a couple of months and I’m excited to learn what I can about the country and its people. I also started learning Hindi in my free time have even started to ask friends to pronounce my name correctly.
Zakir Bulmer is a member of the Class of 2019.

Talk of the Quad

Streetwear and street work: the fashion hustle

February 17, 2017

About a week ago in my urban crisis class with Brian Purnell, Associate Professor of Africana Studies, we had a lively discussion about “hustling” in “The Wire” a popular TV show based in Baltimore revolving around the narcotics world. Central to this world is “the hustle”—drug users hustling drug sellers by using fake money, drug sellers selling a diluted brand to maximize profit and sellers secretly accumulating their own stash from the supplier’s pot. We came to an understanding that “hustling” is an exploitative practice with the intent to maximize profit, usually with a manipulative undertone. One party discreetly benefits more from an unequal exchange. It was at this time that I thought about a hustle that I was once a part of, one that got people camping out on streets for the supply to be distributed, one that preyed on an almost unwarranted obsession and has a huge return—the fashion hustle. And yes, it was perfectly legal.

The hustle is founded in the resale market of the fashion industry through big brands with high exclusivity. For example, Supreme, founded in 1994, went from being a skateboard company with a relatively small following to outfitting the biggest stars, from A$AP Rocky to Neil Young. Now that celebrities are wearing it, being “cool” had a marked-up price tag bigger than ever. To have a Supreme hoodie in 2017 means being seen in the same clothes or with the same sense of style as these celebrities, and it is not easy dressing like these celebrities. Supreme’s online store opens occasionally with outfits exclusive to that season, and their stores do not allow cameras. Even if you have the means to afford a piece of cloth with the Supreme logo on it, you need an “in,” either having the time and knowledge to camp out during their exclusive drops at selected stores, knowing someone who has a connection to Supreme or knowing someone that had a lot of Supreme clothing before its popularity. Exclusivity drives this market, and from this comes a new group that flourished: the middleman in the resale market, where the majority of the hustling in the fashion world occurs.

The resale market occurs mostly online, through easily recognizable names like eBay and Craigslist. Other means include social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram or various blogs online like WordPress. People post a picture of the product, list the selling price and communicate with each other about the exchange online.

Hugh Mo is a prominent fashion icon on campus who runs @_mostyle_, a fashion blog on Instagram with over 11,000 followers. Although Mo wouldn’t call himself a hustler, he does understand the resale market in the fashion industry very well and once profited from it. This past summer, he camped out for a pair of Fear of God jeans, which he purchased for $1,800. Two days later, he resold the jeans for $3,500.

“Good money is involved, and some items crescendo in value. It’s about predicting the market, like stocks. For example, the first Yeezy 350 low tops, when it first came out, people were not sure if it was worth $400-500 resale price from a $200 retail price. Now they are worth $1,700-$1,800 brand new. If you were smart then, you bought as many pairs then as possible,” explained Mo.

This practice seems simple, enticing and extremely profitable, but there are many barriers to entering this market.

Moe said that to join the market, you either have to have a lot of capital to begin with or you can start by hustling anything you see, starting with socks, newspapers, anything—and build up to sneakers.

In addition to having the means to join this market, one must have the smarts and knowledge of the market prices in order to avoid being hustled. Not knowing the market price could lead you to overpay for a product. Lack of experience could lead to a faulty purchase, where the product could end up being fake or not showing up in the mail. Sometimes, even some of the more seasoned fashion bloggers get hustled.

Mo has been hustled before, which he said is a necessary learning curve for people starting out in the business. People are intent on making money, and such practice opens doors for the inexperienced to be hustled. Mo said his reputation is worth more than a couple of scams.

Simon Chow is a member of the Class of 2019

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