I was walking down Locust when I took a picture to send to my friend who attends a different school. Funnily enough, in the picture, I caught three girls: all wearing wide-leg jeans, Adidas Sambas, black trench coats, and the iconic dark blue Longchamp tote.
My friend asked me if no one wears backpacks anymore. Her question reminded me of the times I had felt weird for choosing to use my Jansport in a sea of Coach, Kate Spade, Goyard, and Longchamp. Welcome to Penn, the one place where you can be a college student and still get dress coded.
It all started with the ballet flats. I was seeing Steve Madden, patent leather, red, beautiful flats everywhere I went. It made me realize how useful it would be if I had a pair. So I got myself a pair of red ballerina flats. I can speak for myself when I say that my only motivation when giving into the trend was: “This looks cute.” It became a slippery slope: the platform Uggs, the flare leggings, the Longchamp, the gold jewelry, et cetera.
I wonder: What are we looking for when we follow along with these Penn fashion trends? Is it unique to Penn, or is it an Ivy League, social-status-motivated phenomenon? Do we all genuinely like what we choose to wear or are we just following along to blend in with a crowd of old money, East Coast legacy babies?
There is, in fact, a lot of psychology to fashion. I say that my only motivation for investing hundreds of dollars on retail items that I picked up from the Penn environment was that they were cute. Well, that’s a lie. You and I, we would both love to think we got our Longchamps because they are cute. (And they are.) But we got it mainly because there are cognitive and emotional processes tied to fashion trends that keep us hooked.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people copy each other’s actions “in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation.” I’d like for you to ponder this definition for a while: Is there “correct behavior” to follow while here at Penn?
It gets even better. Social proof, often referred to as “herd mentality,” is especially prominent in situations where people are unable to decode what the correct behavior is, so they assume that others know better. So, are we all clueless and “faking it ‘til we make it” here at Penn? What is it that has got us so confused that we need to look at other people for guidance in fashion? Why do we assume that our fashion style is not appropriate?
There is perhaps something that inevitably throws us off when we get to Penn: We (regardless of our socioeconomic status) are now attending an Ivy League institution, and that name carries power. Coming from a different socioeconomic background and having to engage with peers whose lives have been entirely different to anything you know can be “a paralyzing concern” according to Sofia Barnett, a first-generation student at Brown University. You go from having no clue of what an elite college environment is like to having friends who are millionaires, socialites, and billionaires. As Barnett put it: It feels like being a lost child.
I’m still surprised when I look at my friends’ hands and I see hundreds (perhaps thousands) of dollars worth of jewelry stacked on their wrists and fingers. Stay back in one of your classrooms after lecture and you will hear of people’s weekend trips to Europe and spring break plans worth over $3000.
Fashion, then, becomes our way of coping with this transition. We copy those who we think fit in better with the “Ivy League ideal.” The Longchamp tote and the trench coats are small investments compared to the social capital they come with. It is a subconscious defense mechanism.
As a nonwhite person, there is another layer to my fashion choices: passing. With a majority of people expecting Latinas to be dark skinned, people are surprised to find I am Colombian. At Penn, I have used fashion as a way to blend in even more. Comparing the fashion trends from home to what I wear here, I know that when I wear flare leggings and Uggs, I look more American. Looking more American helps me feel like I fit in better, and sometimes it also makes me feel like I’m better received.
Fashion choices, whether motivated by racial identity, socioeconomic backgrounds, or both, tie back to what is known as the "similar to me effect.” This is a cognitive bias that explains human tendency to surround ourselves with people who look like us, think like us, and behave like us. It makes sense, then, why if you snap a picture of campus you’ll get twins or triplets wearing Longchamp totes and black trench coats.
While Penn’s diversity is what makes it great, it is also daunting: We don’t know what the “right” behavior is. Subconsciously we are constantly worried about trying to fit into this environment that for many is unfamiliar and overwhelming. Fashion is a safe haven in a sea of cognitive biases that tend to favor the elite.
MARIANA MARTINEZ is a College sophomore from Bogotá, Colombia. Her email is marmari@sas.upenn.edu.
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