By, Siavash Minoukadeh, Entertainment Subeditor
The university has a reputation for their students' "unique" sense of style. And, with university being such a formative time for our identities, it can be easy to find yourself trying to fit the "wavy garms" aesthetic. But, how far is too far when it comes to this fashion trend?
‘It’s easy to feel disoriented in a place where students from the home counties have swapped their Jack Wills for something called “Wavy Garms”’. So reads the Huffington Post’s guide to studying at Bristol. As students, we’ve collectively gained a reputation based on the clothes we buy and how we wear them. It would be fair to say that Bristol fashion is definitely unlike what the rest of the country are wearing.
However, being different doesn’t automatically make Bristol style good. That’s a question of personal taste. More importantly, being different doesn’t automatically make Bristol students’ style individual. If anything, I have found Bristol’s supposedly renegade attitude to fashion to be anything but.
More importantly, being different doesn’t automatically make Bristol students’ style individual.
This isn’t just an aesthetic problem: what we choose to wear says an incredible amount about us. Don’t just take it from me, Vivienne Westwood has said that “dress, hairstyle and make-up are the crucial factors in projecting an attractive persona”. Being free to wear what you like, whether it’s just some trackies or a hand-modified jacket decorated with neon paint and safety pins, is critical in shaping how others see you and how you move about in the world.
And in this regard, Bristol is just as restrictive as anywhere else in the country, if not more so. Our reputation as a fashionable, trendy uni has actually created a highly regulated aesthetic culture where experimentation and expression are not encouraged. The typical Bristol wardrobe: flares, chunky Filas, vintage fleeces etc. are not themselves the problem, its their wearers.
The image of Bristol as a trendy uni gives its students a sense of superiority and individuality which is, all too often, completely undeserved. Wearing wavey garms or vintage clothing might be an expression of defiance and individualism in a home counties market town, but it’s hardly interesting here, where every other person is dressed in an almost identical way.
Our reputation as a fashionable, trendy uni has actually created a highly regulated aesthetic culture where experimentation and expression are not encouraged.
Students here are loathe to take risks in the way they dress, unlike somewhere like CSM where students actually make original choices (albeit not always good ones). Modifying, repairing or creating clothes is a rare sight as is the tedious - but rewarding - process of hunting down specific pieces across charity shops and small boutiques. Instead, the popularity of vintage shops and Depop, which pick out and promote a specific set of clothes, show that there is a reluctance to think outside the ‘Bristol-aesthetic’ box.
I’ve found Bristol to be a much more closed, cliquey community than many other universities and this applies to what we wear as well. Of course, this isn’t Clueless and people don’t judge clothing choices as explicitly but there is still a set style worn by the ‘in’ crowd and straying from that does mark people out.
Ultimately, my issue is not with what Bristol students wear, but their attitude towards it.
This insular idea of fashion also leads to some, frankly, stupid pieces of clothing becoming trendy. Take, for example, the Deliveroo jacket that blew up over summer. There is really no reason to want to wear a piece of clothing worn to work an underpaid, under-supported, precarious job. However, as it’s not up for sale - it’s only available to Deliveroo riders - it becomes rare, and therefore a valuable indicator of status. What became a must-have only did so because it was hard to come by and ended up glorifying the gig economy. I strongly doubt that if students had thought about the individual choices they made in what they wore, they would have chosen a Deliveroo jacket as a statement piece. Going along with it for the sake of fitting in is far more understandable.
Ultimately, my issue is not with what Bristol students wear, but their attitude towards it. University should be a time to experiment and find a form of self-expression that is suitable to us but here it feels as though there is a strict style code and we, as students, should seek to break that down and make this university a genuine place for setting trends and experimentation, as so many people outside Bristol seem to think it is.
Featured: Kofo Ajala
What are your opinions on "wavy garms"?
