Arts school offers fashion experimentation

By Jessica Pickens

I started Winthrop as a typical and shy 18-yearold.

My wardrobe consisted of Birkenstocks, Sperry’s, striped polo shirts and jean miniskirts; all very safe and noncutting edge styles.

Wide-eyed, I looked at all the fashionable and modelesque students around me. Both boys and girls wore brightly colored eye makeup, skinny jeans, scarves and short dresses with leggings.

One day, I distinctly remember walking behind a girl wearing a bright yellow short knit dress with a matching beret.

“I could never pull any of that off and will probably stick with my safe and predictable wardrobe for the next four years,” I thought. “I don’t want to stand out too much.”

Little did I know that two years later, I would be shopping to stand out just as everyone else; wearing hot pink tights and space-age sunglasses to class.

It might have something to do with me trying to be Lady Gaga.

As a freshman, I also didn’t talk much. I rarely spoke up in class or talked to people I didn’t know.

No wonder I had a hard time making friends.

Now I work for The Johnsonian and my future career revolves around talking to strangers. When we enter Winthrop, we are all relatively mainstream. We have just exited the safe realm of high school where everyone is virtually the same, wears Hollister or American Eagle and doesn’t do anything that targets them as different.

Once you leave Winthrop, you will probably be anything but mainstream.

As you walk through Thomson Cafeteria or across campus, you can distinguish how many years people have been here to see how far they have evolved into a “weird, artsy” student. Freshmen will still be playing it safe with their fashions. Sophomores are on the edge of diving into being different. Juniors have jumped in and are splashing around in the artsy waters, experimenting and finding out what works best for them. Seniors are sinking to the bottom, lost in their new identities.

High school leaves little room for self-expression. Not only do you have to follow the dress code rules, but the popular kings and queens seem to dictate their own dress code.

At an arts school such as Winthrop, you could wear a leotard to anthropology class and no one would care.

Winthrop has it all - a guy who walks around with a boom box on his shoulder, an art student who paints naked people on canvases outside of Rutledge and students who wear free hug signs and randomly hug everyone.

We are at a liberal arts college.

Let go and take advantage of it.