We wear clothes to express ourselves and to tell soceity our interests, hobbies or share a part of our personality with everyone we’ll see that day. We adorne ourselves with images of our favourite bands, brands or sports team, or if not, we look to emulate a certain fashion or show off our individuality. With our fashions being how we choose the world to see us why does the standard uniform for men on campus seem to be hoody, jeans and trainers?

When talking to other guys about the reasons for the clothes they wear the answers fall into “Comfort”, “Easy” or “Dunno”. When I sat down with some of the guys and asked them pressed for a deeper answer a lot of them told me that there was something “metrosexual” or “homosexual” about wanting to dress well. Naturally I then asked them if they wanted to dress well and they all said “Of course”, then we got deeper into the problem. It turns out some of the guys even claimed to “not always wear the clothes I wanna wear” because “don’t wanna seem like a douchebag, ya know”.  To clarify “douchebag” means “some guy who spends hours on his hair and clothes, vain sort, probably a prick”. The reason why these guys didn’t want to seem like a douchebag… was women, the idea behind wearing casual clothing was to send a message to women telling the women that these guys are approachable and that because they don’t spend too much time on their appearance that they are down to earth and not self-absorbed. Hell! Even the guys who admitted that they liked to dress well said that they only did it to impress girls.

During the interviews it felt as if there was a negative connotation with the idea of “dressing well” or even trying to. The idea that there was something deeply emasculating about wanting to look good shocked me, as at an animalistic level surely its a survival instinct. There are plenty of examples in the animal kingdom; a lion’s mane, a baboon’s bum or a peacock’s feathers . The peacock is an interesting example, as on VH1’s The Pick Up Artist, the “pick-up artist” advises his students to “peacock” in order to garn attention from women.

One of the guys I interviewed told me that to him “peacocking” meant wearing interesting clothes that meant something to him so when people asked him about it he could tell them a story or something interesting from his life. This, to me, summed up what “fashion” should be, it’s a way of showing people how interesting and diverse well all are. It isn’t (or shouldn’t) simply be a way to impress women or to explain to people that you are not a “douchebag” , its a way to express who you are.

Nathan Chai

This article has been reproduced here by the Concourse Deputy-Editor Design. The original author is credited above.