When I interviewed her, Maybank’s outfit was more one of a well-established, confident actress like Julie Andrews who just also happens to be a grandmother: smooth lines, rich grays, and conservative but not plain. To construct her clothes, Maybank culls from this retro inspiration via vintage stores like Second Time Around as well as Oona’s and the GAP for affordable knit fabric to cut up and rework. In addition to viewing fashion as an artistic process, she sees it as a way to discern personality.
“I’m just happy when I see someone wearing something that you can tell is so incredibly unique to that person. I don’t expect anyone to dress like me or to wear anything that I’d like. They’re wearing it because they love it and are following their own inspiration, not necessarily what they see mirrored around them. Anything that tells me a little bit about that person.”
***
Is there a golden ratio of thigh—61.8 percent skin and the remainder fabric—that somehow appeals to the eye? Yes, the night is young, and a veritable chorus line of young women in their best approximations of Hervé Léger bandage dresses and young men in tieless tuxedos spill out onto the runway of Mt. Auburn. This is “trying”; certainly, there are no sweatpants here. The women are wearing low-platform, three-inch-heel wedges (most likely a compromise between flats, which are not trying, and stilettos that pestle the mortar of Cambridge sidewalks). All of the men are smoking cigarettes—the ash dropping on black and navy blazers. Everybody really is a bright, young thing, but I agree with Jay that there are few risks here, no mutations or attempts to set oneself apart; there really isn’t even a feeling of ‘I want to stand out and be beautiful or handsome,” for how can a glittery star in a constellation capture your attention surrounded by so many of its kind?
ONE-MAN SHOW
Maura A. McGrath ’15 stands out, surrounded by none of her kindred fashion spirits—Japanese street style artists. Today, a pink-ribbon-brimmed hat covers her glasses, the chunky frames of which resemble pixels. Cumulatively, McGrath rotates between more American conventional wear like skinny jeans and t-shirts and a dramatic combination of layered, elaborate skirts, a litany of hair color changes throughout the year, and on occasion, a pair of arresting lavender contacts.
“I don’t think I dress beautifully, because that’s kind of not the point,” she says. “Generally, it’s more if I saw a person walking down the street wearing what I was wearing, would I think “do I want to know them?” And if I wouldn’t want to know me, then why would I want to be me?”
McGrath’s interest in fashion began during her gap year, when she discovered Tumblr, which served as a more satisfying, diverse source of fashion inspiration compared to her prior haunts, like Lookbook.
McGrath found that artists and models on Tumblr encouraged alternative ways of thinking about personal style. “Like Minori. She is this shironuri artist who paints her skin white and has these crazy hair wigs. It’s very beautiful,” she says. “But [she’s] no longer a person. It’s an object that’s been dropped, not for our admiration, but just to show a different kind of a being. It makes me realize that there are more options than jeans and a t-shirt.”McGrath also uses fashion as a means of personal expression, but more in the sense that she believes it gives her a mark of individuality that has come to define her person.
“I’m not a phenomenal writer, a math genius, or the most caring person in the world…. There’s nothing that marks me out as an individual that has a place here. If I didn’t dress the way I did, I’d lose that,” she says. “I say, ‘oh, I dress differently,’ but then by saying that, I feel so stuck-up. Then I have to explain to people that it’s not because I’m stuck up, but just because I need that.”
In the case of one Thomas Dai, he had no idea that his Harvard career would find a similar sense of joy and identity from fashion. Dai recently finished producing Identities, worked as creative director for the show last year, worked for Eleganza his freshman year, took an internship last summer at net-a-porter.com, and will publish a fashion magazine this week through Vestis.
And yet, even though he has become a person heavily associated with the fashion scene on campus, Dai had little idea when he came to Harvard that the professional dress style of many students would be his onus to become more aware. “My style has gotten a lot more serious in college. I come from a place where I could be wearing just a fitted shirt and jeans and feel dressy. And then you come here and everyone is so clean and polished. Based on this sort of atmosphere, I thought I had to up the ante and invest in things I always wanted but never had the occasion to wear.”
Wearing a well-tailored blazer—pocket square included—leather shoes, and cropped coal-colored pants, Dai has clearly upped the ante. However, despite a clear individualistic streak in his clothing, he does not believe that his converse—the uniformed style groups of Ivy League, collegiate, and tired—are necessarily negative.
“I think there’s obviously much more important and systemic problems in the world besides whether the girls of Harvard are wearing Longchamp bags and Barbour jackets. And maybe we should talk about whether that should change and ask if it has a WASPy, exclusive feeling that makes people feel like an other. But on the other hand, this is college,” he says. “Harvard style can feel oppressive if you look at it in the wrong way, but I highly doubt that all these people will go off into the world and wear exactly the same thing for years and years.”
LOWERCASE F
For Drummond, fashion is a way to express your heart and soul on your sleeve. For Gao, it is a new world coming over the crest of the horizon. For Pretto, fashion is art—a bottomless well from which you can draw inspiration and use it to coalesce people and the environment they inhabit. For Maybank, fashion comes from history, a complicated process of cutting and deconstructing swaths of fabric to create something new and you. For McGrath, fashion is a way to stand out, to create the person you want to be. And for Dai, fashion is exploratory, a step that he didn’t even know he would take and yet has drawn craft from.
But fashion is not necessarily so neat as these categorizations. In order to enjoy it, you don’t have to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of fashion trends and figures. As Drummond so aptly puts it, all that’s needed is thoughtful consideration of what is around you. “You don’t even have to pinpoint influences exactly. Look outside, it’s part of you. Just take in what’s around you and impress yourself upon it. It doesn’t have to be about Vogue or what have you. Really, it should be much easier,” Drummond says. “This is not fashion with a capital F.”