The Bowdoin Orient

Born and raised in Queens, New York, Hugh Mo ’17, grew up in a world filled with urban streetwear and constantly evolving trends. In June 2016, he developed a blog, @_mostyle_, where he has since built a base of 11.2 thousand followers, establishing himself as a prominent “fashion influencer” within the massive and wide-reaching network of Instagram.

Initially, Mo’s posts focused on the aspects of fashion that he had encountered online, at home in New York City and abroad in Australia. After returning from his time abroad, Mo found himself re-entering the online world of fashion through sites such as Grailed—a one-stop-shop for men’s fashion, and Facebook—which served as a huge resource for Mo. 

While his blog includes many different aspects of fashion, he has a particular love for and interest in sneakers.

Mo’s favorite parts of directing and developing his blog include the connections and friends he has made, as well as the chance to make inroads into the industry in which he hopes to one day be an influential member.

“I started a Facebook group to engage with the community of ‘fashion influencers,’ making friends with people as far as Singapore and Australia,” said Mo. “I just wanted to start something on my own—meeting companies, talking to people in the fashion world, getting closer to the industry that I can see myself working in.”

Specific brands that Mo highlights in his blog are St. Laurent and Fear of God—which he describes as the most visible brand among celebrities. Hoping to spice up his blog, he wants to include female fashion trends and advice for men on a budget.

“We’re trying to incorporate women’s fashion into my blog,” said Mo. “Personally, I think it’s getting a little sterile with just me in it. More collaboration content will make my page more interesting.”

“I love fashion and the idea of the business side of fashion. Trends are always moving, always changing,” said Mo.

Mo’s original and unique style had caught the attention of friends and other Bowdoin community members before his Instagram received thousands of followers. It was these people who suggested that he share his passion and creativity with the rest of the world.

Mo started the process of taking his style to the web with WordPress but later transitioned to Instagram. 

Once he returned to Bowdoin for his senior year, Mo found a photographer, Darius Riley ’19, who could help him gain more influence in the Instagram world of “fashion influencers.”

“I wouldn’t be where I am right now without my photographer,” said Mo.

Riley met Mo through a mutual friend and he offered up his photography services to help with Mo’s new blog.

“I had no true prior experience, just watching videos and playing with the camera,” said Riley. 

One of the elements that sets Mo’s blog apart are the distinctly “Maine” backgrounds. On Thursday afternoons, Riley and Mo venture around campus or into Brunswick, searching for spots that work with the photoshoot that they’re planning for that day. On these photoshoot outings, Riley brings his camera and Mo comes prepared with a bag of outfits that he has scrupulously planned out for his upcoming blog posts.

“I always ask him, ‘What do you want to focus on with this outfit?’” said Riley. “I feel like I have a lot of creativity. The only constraint is the focus for the next post.” 

Riley’s favorite aspects of photographing for Mo center around his goal as a photographer: to capture what he sees with his naked eye. Using the app Lightroom, Riley edits his photos to bring about what he defines as the truth in the photo, an element that the camera is not always able to capture.

“I love editing. Showing Hugh the before and after pictures, even seeing them myself is just…woah, it’s always so amazing...making [him] stand out, even when the picture may seem simple,” said Riley.

Follow @_mostyle_ on Instagram to discover and explore Mo’s style blog.

Darius Riley ’19 is a photographer for the Bowdoin Orient.

Junot Díaz, a Dominican-American author and MIT professor, addressed immigration policies, neoliberalism and surviving as a person of color in predominantly white institutions in a lecture to a packed David Saul Smith Union yesterday evening. 

The speech was the keynote address for the symposium, “Rendering Dominicans of Haitian Descent Stateless,” led by Roger Howell, Jr. Professor of History Allen Wells and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Greg Beckett. 

Díaz began by explaining that he would be giving an “artist talk,” rather than an academic or authoritative lecture. He began the talk by responding to a student’s question that he had been unable to answer during the book signing session before the talk. 

“[How] did you make it this far in these predominantly white institutions?” Díaz said the student had asked him. “Like did you lose part of yourself? Did you find a space?”

“I was so busy self-victimizing because I think we all have a lot of survivor’s guilt,” said Díaz. “What does it mean to survive in a culture that did not mean for us to survive?”

Díaz eventually moved on to the “lecture” portion of his speech, where he addressed racial attitudes, immigration policies and neoliberal policies that create the same problems regardless of the political, social or economic context, in both the Dominican Republic and the United States. 

“Whether I’m talking about [the Dominican Republic] or the U.S., we’re talking about societies that are so deeply embedded in neoliberal regimes that similarities begin to emerge almost unlooked for,” Díaz said.

He focused on citizenship as an essential form of “psychic capital,” meaning a good or status with no real basis, particularly in an era of restrictive immigration policies. 

“Citizenship is a technology for granting people humanity,” he said. 

Díaz compared how both the United States and the Dominican Republic sought to blame problems on immigrants.

“You don’t have to look farther than Trump to see that there is this sense in this nation, being circulated by the elites, that the real problem … is that the presence of immigrants is devaluing the psychic capital of what it means to be an American,” he said. “The Dominican Republic has convinced the nation that the biggest problem in the nation is not the most malign, corrupt political administration that we have seen since the dictatorship … the problem is that we have immigrants.”

At the end of the address, students impatiently stood in line to get autographs and pictures with Díaz. Many students felt that, largely because of his casual and non-authoritative style, his stories and his message resonated deeply, regardless of whether or not they’d had those same experiences.

“He didn’t censor his language, not as in not being politically correct, but not censoring his language as in not using academic words all the time and using very colloquial speech,” said  Giselle Hernandez ’19. “It resonates more with people who aren’t surrounded by all this academia all the time and I really like how his words were powerful just in his word selection.”

“Even though necessarily I haven’t shared a lot of the experiences that he’s had, I can feel the sort of the pain that he’s went through and all of the experiences and all of the [things] he’s gone through to become the person he is today,” said Ryan Ali-Shaw ’19. “More than anything, I think it gives me hope that everything’s gonna be OK because he turned out OK.”

Though Hannah Berman ’18 enjoyed the talk, she wished a more varied crowd had turned out. 

“It was kind of a self-selecting crowd, though, and I would’ve liked to see people from all sides of campus there,” she said. 

Wells was pleased with the address.

“I think [Díaz] catered to students and I think he was able to reach students in a way that someone like me, as a professor, couldn’t, and I think that was really powerful,” he said.