Collegiate Dress
April 30, 2015
THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:
In my Western Civilization course this semester we have studied Homer’s Odyssey, Plato’s dialogues Symposium and Phaedrus, the Letters of Epicurus, and Athanasius’ Life of Saint Anthony – all under the theme of the “Quest for Order.” As supplements to the reading, I screen relevant films for the students – for example, a beautiful filmed performance from Zurich in 1977 of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (1940) and Roberto Rossellini’s Socrates (1970). These items of cinema have an obvious relation to the reading-list, but I also recently screened Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress (2011), about four quirky coeds at the fictitious Seven Oaks University who conclude that the slovenliness of contemporary college-life is intolerable and who resolve to redeem decorum as much as they can in their own chapter of academia. Among the simple gestures undertaken by Violet, Rose, Heather, and Lily are: To dress nicely, even elegantly, every day and to act like civilized people always.
In a discussion of the film, I pointed out that many of the themes from our Greek and Latin authors surfaced in Stillman’s film in offbeat, comic ways, but no less relevantly in the context of our own disordered age. When I asked the students to defend the commitment simply to dress well, they were reluctant to do so. I remarked that I try to dress well and that I do so to show my respect for higher education – which ought to have the goal of fostering intellectual and spiritual order rather than political conformity and the lowest common denominator of everything – and because I respect them. On the spur of the moment, I issued a challenge. Next Monday, I said, I would like you to do me the favor of dressing up, just to prove that you can do it, for class.
Monday was three days ago. About nine out of ten students responded and with the help of a coed’s fancy cell phone with a camera I was able to organize photographs of the event. I call attention to the facts that everyone (or nearly everyone) is smiling, something of a change from the usual glum faces, and that out of their sweat pants and t-shirts, accoutered with a meaningful presentation in mind, the students indeed look like bright young adults whom some employer might feel confident in hiring.
While hardly a scientific experiment, the occasion is suggestive. Very small changes can make very big differences. I suspect that if the students in the photographs made sprucing up a habit, it would alter the college experience for each one of them and perhaps, by mimetic influence, of the institution at large.
Laura writes:
Interesting.
By way of comparison, here are some photos of college students in the 1950s. Most of them appear happy even though they are by today’s standards dressed in very uncomfortable and formal clothes.
Brooklyn College
Rosemont College
Reed College
Bethune-Cookman College
University of Tennessee, 1960
— Comments —
Hurricane Betsy writes:
The students from the 1950s in those photos are happy-looking in spite of their un-natural, uncomfortable clothing, not because of it. In my opinion, clothing can be beautiful, comfy – and modest. It’s doable. Look at some traditional societies. Everything loose and flowing, unlike the 1950s, with pencil skirts, girdles, garters and nylons, etc. I remember it all and do not miss these. I also recall the boys wearing heavy, scratchy wool trousers against their skin, even in summer. Not saying that today’s fashions are better, of course they aren’t. They are abominations for the most part.
Laura writes:
I didn’t mean to suggest that the 1950s were the apex of women’s fashion. Some of the tight-fitting clothes typical of the 1950s are definitely uncomfortable.
A faithful reader writes:
The college where my future wife and I met still had a very strict dress code in the mid 60s. When we began dating we naturally dressed as we did for classes. I in dress pants and shirt, sometimes with coat and tie, she in a dress, usually with heels. We looked nice for each other, without really thinking about it. Our dress displayed respect for ourselves and for each other, and very soon we were in love. The beginning of a 42-year romance.
Laura writes:
And yet it so quickly devolved.
What happened?
Well, one thing that happened is that women stopped caring. Careerism, which powerful forces pushed relentlessly on ordinary women not to liberate them but to control them and exploit them, replaced the extremely important role women played, which included creating and enforcing standards of dress, which were standards of beauty. Now we have standards of ugliness. Now we have quasi-nakedness.
Feminism said women were doing nothing all those years. Now we see all around us that the feminists were so wrong. Clothes have never been uglier.
Immodesty for women is not liberating. It is not conducive to learning. It is essentially anti-intellectual. To the extent to which a woman develops her mind, she develops her womanhood.
