Consider the onion: layers help students reinvent back-to-school styles

348 and Maine street: Nicer weather is no excuse for jorts

First things first: Happy Ivies! If your eyes are able to focus enough to read this far, you deserve a medal. And if you make it to the end of the article, I’ll buy you a cookie.
I don’t mean to suggest you’re intoxicated in some way or another— and don’t endorse such behavior—but if you’re sober, then Amy Winehouse is alive and well (which is to say it’s not likely). If you are sober and plan on staying so this weekend, I suggest you flee as quickly as possible—or at least buy some earplugs and a blindfold. This is not going to be pretty.
I’m not just talking about the litter or the vomit or the post-nap flyaway hairs—I’m more concerned with the clothes. Ivies has a style problem. It seems that when Ivies rolls around, or rather stumbles around, the wardrobe of almost each and every student shrinks to two regrettable pieces: the tank top and jorts. If you are somehow unaware of the heinous spectacle that is jorts, then I envy you more than Tom Klingenstein wishes he was a Polar Bear and not a Eph.

348 and Maine street: Give it the boot: the Beans are better off without lifetime warranty

Yes, I've been away. Yes, you've missed me, like Tom Cruise misses Katie Holmes. And that’s a lot, because now he has no one to play with in his Scientology dungeon.
And did I miss you all? Well, let's just say I missed you about as much as Katie misses Tom, which is probably more than any of us realize. The steady cash flow that comes with being Tom Cruise's wife is more than sufficient to forget anything that comes up during those pesky dungeon games.
Never underestimate the effects of some good old fashioned Stockholm syndrome: you don't really understand how you got trapped in this strange place, the things you're forced to do seem bizarre at best, but pretty soon things start to seem really fun and you wonder if you've been drugged. Maybe you have, but who cares, it's a party. That's pretty much what coming back to school is like, so even if I didn't miss you, give me a week and I'll never want to leave again.

348 and Maine street

Consider the onion: layers help students reinvent back-to-school styles

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Evan Horwitz

Columnist

September 13, 2013

Believe it or not, it’s September again. Yes, the summer has flown by faster than Miley can twerk. While I must admit that I’m more than a little sad to see warm weather go, I take comfort in knowing it will soon be back again.

So don’t mourn the end of summer. In fact, let’s celebrate the pumpkin-drenched, cinnamon-spiced, oatmeal-munching feast for the senses that is fall. But this is a style column, not a cookbook, so why should you give a twerking ass about pumpkin and cinnamon and oatmeal?
First, because those are the new colors featured in this season’s catalogue from the fine (and apparently hungry) people at J. Crew. Second, and more importantly, you should care because these months between sand and snow bring us style at its most delicious.

It’s called back-to-school for a reason: this is style at its cleverest, a time when even the most hopeless slackers put in a little effort. But the fact that we try harder is not the real reason fall is the only season when aesthetically minded people walk around without praying for blindness.
No, the truth about autumn’s awesomeness lies in the layers. All the best things in life have layers (see: cake, stacks of money, ogres), and fall fashion is no exception. Wearing layers is so fabulous because it’s like being a real, live Russian nesting doll: you can have 27 looks with one outfit.

While many people talk the talk about layers, few really walk the walk of three coats, four sweaters, and 64 scarves before breakfast. I’m afraid few believe, as I do, that layers are the root of autumn’s uncontested greatness. Every fashion rag or menswear zine gives only a passing nod to layers, instead telling us time and time again that fall is the time to reinvent yourself, refresh your style, renovate your look.

I love this idea and endorse it because it is so wonderfully delusional and fantastically snide. Usually when someone tells me that I can become a whole new person I wonder what is so displeasing about the person I am now and why it is so urgent that I radically transform. I then become suspicious that this person is trying to sell me something. Usually, they are.
Setting aside the questionable notion that you can wholly reinvent yourself without the help of the Witness Protection Program, a fabulous PR team (a la Lohan) or the complete lack of one (like Ms. Bynes), let’s get down to brass tacks, or in this case, gold sequins. We’d all love to transform, but who has the cash for a new wardrobe each fall? Unless your oven stores more disposable cash than Carrie Bradshaw’s does shoes, buying all the necessities for a brand new you can be all but impossible.

What to do? There’s always prostitution, but I have it on good authority that most people here would make very bad prostitutes; also, whoring requires its own special costume that might require additional, counter-productive shopping. Prostitution is therefore not recommended. Neither is selling drugs: the inevitable orange jumpsuits become no one. A Bling Ring-style theft might sound like an easy way to get your hands on some glam garb, but unless your look du jour is something along the lines of an X-rated Malibu Barbie or an equally plastic Real Housewife, this plan is also a no go.

So what to do? Perhaps borrow a page from the punk book and get your hands dirty with some DIY. But, I hear you say, sewing is boring and hand-altering clothes might make me look poor, or worse, like some kind of alternative, anarchist, punk, vegan, urban farmer activist! Poor you.
Yes, sewing is dreadful and should be classified as an illegal torture. Every time I think it might be a good idea to sew something by hand, be it a two-hole button or something more daring like a four-hole button, I try for about a minute and a half, then burst into tears. And don’t get me started on sewing machines; they are terrifying and surely have some pact with the devil.
But making new what is old doesn’t require a seamstress’s hand (although if you have one at your disposal, by all means, sew away). At the moment, for instance, I’m shrinking out-of-shape wool sweaters. Get creative and break the rules: roll pants that shouldn’t be rolled, wash fabric that’s supposed to be dry-cleaned, grab some scissors and sharpies and play! (Note: I am not responsible for any damage, and if you take a marker to an $8,000 Lanvin dress, you are an idiot and I can’t help you.)

As for your fear of looking like anything but deeply conformist and your dread of going to a party and not having sixteen people tell you they have the very same shirt, all I can say is this: I can’t imagine why you would want to look like everyone else. But to mix metaphors (and clichés): live a little, color outside the lines, dare to be different, there’s no crying in baseball.
P.S. If you’re looking around campus to see what strange new look I’m sporting this fall, or more likely, looking to tell me that my column is insulting or frivolous, you will not find me. This is not because I’ve completely transformed my style and had major plastic surgery—I haven’t. No, it’s because I’m abroad in London for the semester.

Some idiot once proclaimed that on the streets of London you can preview the next trends six months before anywhere else. I have no idea if that’s true and I’ve never been a fan of trends. But London is certainly a place where there are people with profound style and true eccentricity. But Bowdoin is a place like that too, and this is still a column for Bowdoin students and about style as it happens at Bowdoin. From about 3,480 miles from Maine Street, I will do my best to stay true to that. (Okay, that number is made up, but it fits so well with the title of my column that I couldn’t resist.)

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