Fashion Gaze

By Luis de las Cuevas and Ian Kretz     10/24/12 7:00pm

Rice University students, when considered in totality, are not well-dressed. We wish we had a dollar for every time someone walked past in running shorts - two if they were also wearing a free T-shirt from some RPC event. The typical Rice student is busy with so many commitments that perhaps wardrobe choices, when considered at all, are made hastily. Oftentimes, these wardrobe choices are made out of sheer necessity to throw something on other than pajamas.

 It is the opinion of Fashion Gaze that hasty, ill-made apparel choices need not be the case and that anybody can be well-dressed. This weekly column will feature easy ways to integrate some style into your closet without taking too much time away from your organic chemistry problem sets or too much money out of your late-night Domino's Pizza fund.

For this first Fashion Gaze, we thought we should discuss something of greatest importance and generality style-wise: knowing how to dress appropriately for a given occasion. Looking good comes down to knowing what wardrobe choices are acceptable in a particular setting. The person wearing a sensible black dress and heels is not the one who sticks out at the Shepherd School performance - it is the student who showed up in cutoff shorts and a crop-top.

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The most relevant setting to discuss on a university campus is the classroom, as all of us are at least supposed to be in one at some point each week. The classroom demands a certain amount of professionalism from us as students and our style should reflect that. We are not saying you should go out and buy a new wardrobe consisting entirely of pantsuits to wear to your 10 a.m. class. But, whether intentionally or not, your wardrobe communicates something about you personally and, more to the point, academically.

Let us talk about what not to wear to class. It is never acceptable to be in the presence of someone who holds a doctorate while wearing pajamas. That is not a thing. Your professors at Rice are professionals who have all made it in their fields, and though they may not (and probably will not) comment on your sitting in the front row of their lecture in your favorite PJs (you know, the ones that say "PINK" right across your rear), they will notice it. Wearing pajamas to class communicates contempt both for your professors' time and for the subject they teach. Why not take the extra 30 seconds to put on a pair of real pants rather than just rolling out of bed and plopping down in your seat for class?

Now for the running shorts. We are completely baffled by the insatiable need some Rice students apparently have to be workout ready at any moment throughout their day. Are you guys hitting the recreation center during those 10-minute windows between classes? We feel the answer is no, given the average physique about campus. What we are getting at is that unless you are going for a workout, are currently working out or are returning from a workout, you should not be wearing exercise clothes. While choosing to do so is not as disrespectful as walking around in pajamas, exercise attire is purposed attire and is therefore inappropriate in the classroom.

We believe it is our duty as students in one of the nation's top schools to look the part. We have the potential to achieve the unimaginable, which can only get a little easier once we understand what to wear and where to wear it.

 

Fashion Gaze is a column written by Wiess College juniors Luis de las Cuevas and Ian Kretz. The purpose of Fashion Gaze is to improve the

social norms of style on campus.

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