Brimmer Morrison
Contributing Writer
As the Ohio fall weather gets colder, the athletes go to their freezing night practices and everyone studies until they have heart palpitations. It is certainly hard to put together an outfit for the day or think about how you want to present yourself. The nights have officially transitioned to freezing temperatures, the days are crisp with lip-cracking breezes and when it rains, the brown sludge runs off of the Lowry renovation construction site. I am not going to sugarcoat it, sometimes walking around campus during this point of the semester fills me with dread. With that said, I believe that wearing the right clothes for the occasion has the possibility of changing your mood and even making your day a bit more productive. Dress for success, right? With The College of Wooster having an excellent mix of different individual backgrounds and environments associated with those backgrounds, it is hard to know what to wear at this school when the fall weather starts to turn. Some of us love the availability to layer our sweaters and some of us have a trusty coat that we just put on to go to class.
For everyone on campus, there are a few timeless fall/winter looks and pieces that I think people of all walks of life can keep their eyes out for and maybe buy with the little money that we have from working our campus jobs. All of the items I mention can be picked up on secondhand websites like Depop, Poshmark, The Real Real, Ebay or local thrift spots for a fairly reasonable price. To start out, workwear and hiking gear are always a sustainable and functional way to upgrade your closet. You might want something athletic but stylish, cue waterproof pants. Made from a variety of materials like nylon, GORE-TEX or a synthetic cotton, waterproof pants will help you a lot when you start wanting to walk up the entirety of Beall Ave to get a frozen pizza from the C-store. In addition to waterproof pants, a rain jacket or an insulated parka will have you cozy and dry through even the nastiest of Ohio weather. Too many of you use umbrellas thinking it will allow you to wear an outfit while staying dry, however, that is simply not the right thinking. When it starts hailing on and off for seven hours, your body will still lose excessive heat when you needlessly hold a piece of metal out in front of you thinking it will keep you safe.
Other than simply preparing for bad weather and staying out of the elements, the styles that I would suggest to the College would be described as post-Soviet as well as Japanese prep. I highly suggest looking at what you already have in your closet as reference and try building off of one of these style platforms. Post-Soviet fashion generally mixes track suits and athletic wear with oversized suits, especially oversized suit jackets and whatever shoes you have. A fun addition, if you’d like to show off some muscle, is wearing tight, athletic, long sleeves with baggy, pleated pants and a chunky belt. Many students on campus already wear dark academia and style quite well, so Japanese prep fashion could give an alternative edge to your beloved dark academia look. With more loafers, duck boots, baggy jeans, overcoats in natural tones and fitted hats, Japanese prep adds a bit more of a neutral gender approach in comparison to Western prep because of its ambiguous silhouette. In the QR Code attached, you can find a mood board of outfit inspirations that I mentioned in this article. Go take a look.
PS: Balaclavas are in… I hope to see someone wearing one soon.
