Recalling my own Midwestern college days and how we lived in sorority sweatshirts and running tights—and well, some awful early nineties blazers with massive shoulder pads and indescribable floral-patterned dresses—I laughed. I did not find Gustavian fashion strange, only strangely familiar. Had time stood still?

You are fashion

Fashion is in fashion. A recent New York Times article declares that college is the new runway and that project celebrates “individuality.”

Ivy League students who spend more time on fashion blogs than books confidently report: “Sweats get an F.” Being seen in class apparently requires fashioning outfits, not arguments. Given college costs, this saddens even a feminist professor with a passion for fashion.

Simply giving sweats an F would not pass in a fashion studies class, however. In fact, sweats reflect a quintessential, timeless U.S. fashion that comes in a wide range of budget options and is imitated stylistically around the world.

At our very own fashion store, The Bookmark, I find a range of letter garments and colors beyond the gold and black t-shirt or hoodie, and combos are clearly infinite—even if jeans far out-number skirts on the mall. Gustavian jeans fashion includes skinny, baggy, designer, vintage and even some bottom flair (my personal favorite). Understanding college fashion requires an eye for the subtle trends.

We belong to our closets

The truth is, clothes do so much more than keep us warm and respectable. Whether to a nation, sports team, subculture or academic institution, dress style conveys and assigns belonging.

Style is always political—t-shirts and buttons are not our only political choices. Vintage is not just in fashion; it prevents landfill, reflects nostalgia and both familial and cultural be-longing—think of the passed-down wedding dress.

Fashion also shows religious conviction—down to the tiniest cross necklace accessory. The headscarf is a marker of faith—and an immensely trend-sensitive garment that, on my home campus in Stockholm, like all over the Muslim world, comes in a wide range of sizes, colors, shapes and materials for the fashionable pious girl. In the professional world, including academia, dress communicates status—not just during rituals where faculty and graduates march in costly or borrowed regalia.

In many settings, “professor” still means a suit-wearing man, whereas a short skirt or revealing cleavage is the antithesis of authority and intellect. Fashion can hide or reveal status; it can cost a lot of money to look cheap, as Dolly Parton demonstrates and as Chanel bags are traded on Ebay.

In any case, while many of us say we wear whatever was closest or cleanest when we woke up, our dress always communicates with the world. The style of no style is still a style!

Just be a queen

Dress, indeed, clearly signals gendered and sexual belonging. Outside the drag show, a skirt on a boy or a suit on a girl can clearly be enough to throw some straight folk into a panic. While National Coming Out Day asks us to leave the closet, many of us also dwell in closets and their contents can be sources of bonding.

The slogan “don’t come out of the closet unless you have something fabulous to wear” unites drag queens and femmes.

When femmes look fabulous it typically means we look like most women. Feminine beings of all genders and sexualities share experiences and navigation skills in a world where wearing high heels and short skirts can be dangerous.

My Rockabilly-loving Mary’s masculine presentation is often read as “obviously queer” and it’s a fashion that creates bonds with other Rockabilly dudes, like Nate at Saint Peter’s Barbershop. While identity is not as simple as the clothes we wear, closets are certainly more than sources of pain and shame.

Ulrika’s Collection

Back in my own closet—this fall, regrettably, the size of one suitcase—I recall another campus fall, 21 years ago. My own first week of college I too promptly acquired the sweats of belonging and in ninety degree heat, senior members of the international student club took us newly-arriveds to Burlington Coat Factory.

My South Asian friends and I—who found our fashion exoticized and our class status altered upon arrival in the land of sweats and dollars—were puzzled. As the Wisconsin winter hit, we were grateful, if not exactly fashionable as we knew it.

This year I’ve joyfully worn summer dresses through October. Now I will marvel in wool coats, suits and dresses, skinny jeans, vintage hats and patterned stockings—and I look forward to observing what the seasonal change will bring to the Gustavus Runway.