This was the week in which we woke up from our long winter’s naps and returned to early rising, feverous note taking, and, of course, the inescapable frigidity of the Artic—I mean, Midcoast Maine weather.
Some of you will protest that your vacation was not a long winter’s nap, but rather a series of sun-induced dozes on your towel in Boca Raton. But most of you, if I may be so bold, did a lot of nothing over your hibernation period. Even those of you with deep tans, natural or spray on (which, by the way, will fade), spent a lot of time doing nothing with or without sand between your toes.
But now the time has come for you once again to wash your hair at least twice per week, to change your underwear at least once a day, and to do something more productive with your time than watch marathons of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” or “Law and Order.” Now you must put away your Juicy sweats, those heinous housecoats of the twenty-first century that you bought in eighth grade, and put on some real clothes—clothes that will get you to class in sub-zero weather.
As someone—or perhaps everyone—once said, transitions are hard. And the change we face from the languor and ennui and online shopping of winter break to the exhaustion of drunkenness and studying (and online shopping) of spring semester is no exception. No longer can you graze in the open refrigerator for hours at a time; now you must synchronize your feeding period with the odd hours of the dining halls. No longer can the day’s main event be logging into eBear to look for internships only to be distracted by Scott and Kourtney’s latest tiff; now you must go to class and do homework and actually find something to do over the summer or, if you are a senior, with the rest of your life. But no longer do your parents’ questions hover over you; now your stress falls to a never ending cascade of emails from Career Planning.
So—at this moment when we leave something like the real world and return to the so-called Bowdoin bubble—let me take a moment to reflect on the differences between how we dress at Bowdoin and how people dress in the larger world.
I spent my break in New Haven, Manhattan, Chicago, and some places in between. It is to the inhabitants and visitors of these towns and cities that I will compare us Polar Bears. As we sit in the Union or run to Thorne before it closes, how does our garb rival the habiliment of New Yorkers languishing on the steps of the Met or tromping through Madison Square Park to get to Eataly? Or to the sartorial leanings of New Havenites charging across the Green to get to the new Shake Shack? Or even to the attire of Chicagoans doing whatever it is they do (eating steak and building skyscrapers, as far as I can tell)?
The answer—because I can make it so—is complicated. First the good news: Bowdoin students, on the whole, are more fashionable than your average American urbanite. Now the bad news: we are far less stylish than those metropolitan masses. You are wondering now what the difference is between fashion and style. I’ll tell you.
To be fashionable is own and wear nice clothes, pretty clothes, the essential pieces that Cosmo or GQ told you to buy. But style is more elusive; style is something unique and intriguing about the way you wear clothes. Style is not having the required pieces and looking better than everyone else.
At Bowdoin, we students have fashion but no style. Yes, some of you sport Barbour jackets and Tory Burch flats (or their knock-offs), but so does everyone else. And I guess that is precisely the point: fashion is what someone else tells you to wear, style is when what you wear tells others something about you. If you want to see some style, you need not look any further than our professors, particularly those (though I am biased) in the English or theatre departments. You can learn something from your professors after all.
In this new year, let’s make an effort, in this new year, to be more stylish. Take risks, be bold, and wear a kimono to class. Above all, you do you; no one else can.