From Vera Wang to vintage, Gucci to garage sale, Tufts students represent all points on the fashion spectrum. But at the end of the day, does the average Jumbo care enough about their clothing to project a personal "image?"
Junior Samuel Ross said he only needs two minutes to get dressed.
"That's the amount of time it takes to put on clothes," he said.
Some more sartorially minded Jumbos, like senior Clinton Oxford, approach fashion as an art form. When asked how much time he typically spends getting dressed, Oxford laughed.
"Too much. Like, at least half an hour. Not including the time I'm thinking the night before," he said. Like most other students, Oxford said that he dresses primarily for himself.
"I think [my style] reveals that I'm a pretty thoughtful person, very interested in aesthetics and surroundings," he said.
On a day?to?day basis, though, physical and psychological comfort - rather than boundary pushing - tends to reign over most students' fashion choices.
"I like to think I have a 'look' that's not particularly trendy but is still current," sophomore Micaela Mullee said, showing off her skinny jeans and cardigan and menswear staples.
Similarly, with his flannel, sweater and jean ensembles, Ross prefers a tidy look that doesn't distract from his personality.
"I like the classic standards," he said. "I don't want anything crazy."
Junior Michael Richard, who has gained modest campus fame for pairing virtually all of his outfits with one of two sweatshirts, said that he has avoided cultivating a "look" when it comes to his wardrobe.
"Unless slightly depressed college kid is a look..." he said.
It's easy to take this casual approach on the Hill, but School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) dual?degree student Natasha Jessen?Petersen, a senior, said she dresses differently depending on whether or not she plans to go downtown for an SMFA class.
"You get judged more for what you're wearing at the SMFA," she said. Once, she added, she was mocked while at the SMFA for "looking like a Tufts student" in her Ralph Lauren sweater.
Cultural norms also play an influence. Sophomore Josette West said that when she came to the East Coast from Minnesota, she found that her Midwest duds weren't quite in line with the more upscale dress that defines East Coast fashion.
"In Minnesota, everyone wears a fleece and jeans," West said. "When I came here, I tried to upgrade my wardrobe. Now I've started to develop my own sense of fashion," she said.
"If I'm going to give a presentation in class ... I try to look put together. But I try to do that anyway, so it's not a big leap," West added.
While students at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy may pull out the bowtie or pencil skirt before they attend lectures, undergraduates at Tufts need not feel pressure to dress "professionally" for the benefit of their professors, Professor of Philosophy George Smith said. Students' approaches to fashion, he explained, don't generally influence the professional respect they hold for their pupils. If Smith does notice a student's clothes, he said, it was only in cases where the student stood out because of contrast with his or her classmates.
"I'll often ask them who they're interviewing with," he said of formally dressed students.
Smith recalled his experience as an undergraduate at Yale University, when he was required to wear a coat and tie to all of his freshman classes. It was only after the Vietnam War, Smith said, that professors would even consider wearing jeans to class - even if students had been doing so for a while.
"Students gained a great deal of control over their own lives," he said when asked about the cause of this shift.
Professor of English John Fyler said that although he has noticed female students dressing more fashionably than they used to, it didn't matter to him as a professor making academic or professional assessments.
"It's different from a professional school, like a law or business school, where there's an emphasis placed on dressing well," he said.
Despite the relaxed pressure of an undergraduate campus, Oxford says, he feels far from unique in holding himself to a higher standard.
"Every week I'm pretty pleased with people walking around campus," he said. "We have some innovative dressers on campus. I'm pretty inspired by them."
This isn't limited to his peers, though.
"Professors, too," Oxford added.
Some students only really feel the need to dress up for work?related reasons, whether that involved wearing a collared shirt in place of a T?shirt or taking an extra few minutes in the morning.
For example, junior Eliza Ziegler, who is a hostess at The Foundry on Elm in Somerville, said that she does dress up for her job despite having some mixed feelings about it.
"It's a requirement. I wouldn't say that I enjoy it. It kind of makes me feel bad because it makes me fully realize that part of my job is to look good and be ... attractive to customers," she said.
Ziegler also brought up the opposing challenges she faced when choosing what to wear.
"I guess there's a sort of dichotomy between being tough as a girl and embracing your sexuality by wearing something like a low?cut shirt," she said.
