When a supporter of former president Ronald Reagan, Raymond "Doc" Frazier, saw Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time, he knew from his manner of dress that he was the right General Secretary of the Communist Party to help thaw the Cold War.
"All I had ever seen of Soviet leaders was [Nikita] Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table and some old men in drab uniforms all looking like Mao Zedong, you know, had no personality and looked like they were zombies," he said, according to a CNN documentary. "But here comes Gorbachev: He's wearing a good, well-cut Brooks Brothers suit and tie; he even had on a white shirt! He was outgoing, he was meeting people, he was joking and he was getting along with people in Washington, D.C."
January 2009's issue of Esquire bolsters the validity of Frazier's judgment in its "Vocabulary" section, playing with the different connotations of synonyms for "pants":
Trousers (noun): What the stylish man calls pants.
Slacks (noun): What the unstylish man calls pants.
Breeches (noun): What the dead man calls pants.
Pants (noun): What the indifferent man calls trousers, slacks and breeches.
With so much emphasis on the implications of men's clothing, it is clear that no one -- especially a man -- is as nonchalant as he might pretend to be. Yes, Dartmouth, this means that the sweatpants-and-Oxford-button-down combination, however dubious its logic, is a deliberate gesture.
While I have little sense of what many Dartmouth men wore before they got here, several trends have emerged that demand our consideration, most of which coalesce into an image of a Dartmouth man who is both practical about his dress and misguided about its implications.
Though it might be productive to divide the male population into those who endorse "the hoodie" and those who, as a certain Melville protagonist is wont to repeat, "prefer not to," there are more specific items that demand our attention. As an example, let us begin with the shoes de rigeur: Timberlands, or "Tims."
The Timberland Company is geared toward the outdoors. While this potentially explains the prevalence of its boots on campus, the company's historical clients are not all mountain men. Contrary to the stated intent of the company, these durable boots instead became "urban street wear" after being popularized by 1990s hip hop artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Biggie, Tupac and Mobb Deep. Urbandictionary.com has 134 associated definitions for Timberlands, including what will happen to you if you scuff the wrong person's Tims.
This said, I had never seen so many white, prep school students wearing Tims until I came to Dartmouth, which led me to question the motives behind the shoe trend. While I would like to credit Psi U's pledges, I think it comes down to practicality. They're comfortable. They're durable. As many of my male friends said when asked about their Tims, "I've had these since high school."
Moving up the leg to the torso presents a more curious predicament: the aforementioned sweatpants-and-button-down-shirt combination. As far as I can tell, this look is best described as the Dartmouth permutation of mullet chic. Instead of being "all business up front, party in the back," the look allows for a certain orderliness up top and a slovenliness down below. While this may serve practical purposes as far as comfort is concerned, I have yet to discover a place where it makes logical sense, aside from for those working as bank tellers, or in other window-operating positions.
Furthermore, sweatpants often occupy the same niche as its female component, tights worn as pants: the too-much-information-about-your-neighbor one. While these cottony pants do not reveal the curve of one's buttocks to the extent that tights do, they tend to fall in opportunistic arrangements about other bodily appendages in ways that are equally -- ahem -- telling. This outfit confounds me, especially when worn to class with bedroom slippers in the snow, and is surely perceived with confusion by others.
Though this ensemble is common, it is not the only uniform of the Dartmouth man. Equally prevalent is "the professor," or one who wears a jeans and/or khaki-and-collared-shirt-under-sweater combination. Much like Nickelodeon's Doug Funnie, these practical gents wear the same outfit every day, varying only slightly by hue.
Likewise, plaid flannel -- or what fashion magazines call "Lumberjack chic," a distant cousin to mullet chic -- seems to be embraced by Dartmouth students, not because Urban Outfitters started carrying it, but because it is, again, comfortable. And besides, we do have a Woodsmen's team.
Contrary to what a department store clerk once told me about Hanover fashion after taking my student ID for a discount -- "It looks like J.Crew and Brooks Brothers threw up on Dartmouth" -- no one actually dresses so formally or expensively, leaving their best clothing for corporate interviews.
Of course, it doesn't look like any of our students will be stepping up to end the Cold War, either.
