PrintFlannel by Scotland, leather boots by Italy, iPod by Silicon Valley via multiple Asian countries. It’s not news that style has gone global, but how is international style interpreted inside our 116th Street gates? Columbia boasts more than 4,600 foreign students and 2,100 foreign faculty; around 250 Columbia undergrads study abroad each year.Here, international influence is no small thing. Recently returned study-abroad students and a new crop of international students take the idea of international style beyond the label.
Rather than singling out specific foreign trends, students who have studied abroad seem more aware of different international attitudes toward style, which often have larger cultural implications. Michael Bossetta, a senior in CC and a recent returnee from the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, observes that in Copenhagen, “they really dress pretty conservatively, nothing too showy.” This attitude towards fashion is a reflection on “Jante Law,” which is taught to Danish children from an early age and states that no one is more special than anyone else. The Jante Law attitude extends to other lifestyle areas as well, like wellness. It’s fitting that Copenhagen, the city that just held the global climate change summit, is outfitted with a complete bike infrastructure, which is used by 36 percent of the population to commute to work. “Even the CEOs are on bikes. It’s the same thing that no one’s better than anyone else,” Bossetta says.
Religious climate can also be an integral influence on dress. Elizabeth Whitman, a junior in CC who spent the fall in Amman, Jordan, details the head-to-toe ensemble worn by Jordanian Muslim women. For most, everyday wear includes the jilbab, which resembles a floor-length trench coat, and some type of hair covering. The most conservative dressers add a nikhab, which covers the face except for a slit for the eyes. “Even the least covered-up people are pretty covered-up,” Whitman says. “I don’t think I saw any cleavage while I was there.”
This conservatism doesn’t completely eliminate the expression of personal style, though. One way Jordanian girls make a statement is with the fit of the clothes. Whitman remarks, “The whole point of covering up is being modest, but you know exactly what a girl looks like when clothes are that tight.” Barely-there skirts are neither flattering over winter-pale legs nor comfortable in February weather. While tight clothes may not be the best answer, Columbians might take a cue from Jordanians and get more creative with sexy dressing.
Katie Dunn, a senior in CC speaking after a semester at Reid Hall in Paris, touches on an entirely different aspect of style—quality. “The fabrics are nicer there,” she says, touching the buttery-silk grey scarf around her neck. “Definitely quality over quantity. French girls might wear the same thing more often, but they always look really sharp.” This mentality strongly contrasts that of Columbia students, whose dorm-room closets often are overflowing with wear-and-chuck items from the likes of Forever 21. Although it must be said that Reid Hall wine-and-cheese begs a quality outfit more than Columbia beer-and-Koronet’s pizza.
These style paradigms lead to an the investigation of the reverse situation. What do international students make of American culture from Columbia student style? The conversation doesn’t seem to bode well for students at the get-go. When asked to describe Columbian style, Austrian Thomas Rantasa, a first-year in SEAS always found in a crisp button-down, promptly responds, “Sweatpants and flip-flops.” Brit Cosima Travis, a first-year in CC, chimes in with an almost identical description of the flattering trio of “sweatpants, socks, and flip-flops.”
However, this doesn’t have to be a negative comment on American culture. Francesco Ragazzi, a spring-semester Columbia College exchange student from Bocconi University in Milan, says, “In Italy I would never go out in my sweatpants. Here you can go dressed in whatever you want and people do not care. In Italy they do.” So the sweatpant-wearers of Columbia reflect a less judgmental cultural environment. They also reflect a more active culture. “People here are more on their way or just coming back from the gym. I don’t exercise at all,” Travis laughs. At Ragazzi’s school, organized sports teams don’t even exist, and private gym fees aren’t that feasible for students.
Clearly, not all Columbians favor the fresh-out-of-the-gym look, or the gym for that matter. The most important, and simplest, observation is that there’s no way to lump everyone into one style category. Rantasa has it right when he says, “It really does depend, there is no ‘Austrian style,’” just as there is no one Italian or Jordanian or American style. There may be broad cultural styles—more preppy in Austria, more modest in Jordan, more casual in the United States—but style is diverse everywhere. More so at Columbia than at less international-minded universities, countless incarnations of international and local style blend with and play off each other.
Student dress at Columbia reflects more generally the melting-pot nature of New York and the United States at large. Leave it to an international student to capture the merit of this stylistic mélange. Ragazzi says, “In my university is very about business type of dress. Here it’s more eclectic, diversified, even crazy—pink pants and this kind of thing. It’s more fun to look at.”