Take a stroll on a campus sidewalk and brand-name labels flash past at strobe-light speed. Open the door to a lecture hall and a sea of high-end clothing brands waits to be noticed and recognized. The logos and names vie for attention or beg to be overlooked in their boring familiarity.

The list of usual suspects eventually blurs together – UGGS boots lead to North Face fleeces lead to Seven jeans and so on. When describing the Northwestern fashion, students count off the brands as if to say, “We’ve heard it all before.”

“For jeans, there’re Sevens and Citizens,” says Anya Hayden, a Communication freshman. “Then there’s (the shoe labels) Jimmy Choo and UGGS.”

People here wear a lot of the same brands, says Emily Kintzer, an Education senior. “Burberry scarves are pretty recognizable,” Kintzer says. “Or you’ll see a distinctive sweater from the Gap that everyone’s wearing.”

Most NU students are brand-conscious, many students say. And though students generally buy designer clothing with their parents’ money, a higher-class logo can boost a student’s image. Brands signal status and success, and they associate the wearer with positive images from advertisements and the peer groups seen wearing them.

But not all brands are created equal. Abercrombie, Hollister, Roxy and American Eagle were high school brands, students say. Brands like Prada, Gucci, Armani, Sevens and UGGS are higher-class brands found in college, especially at a school with a $40,000-per-year price tag.

Branding at Northwestern

Sometimes, the brands you wear determine what social group you’re in – or, in other cases, your group tells you what brands to wear.

“At sororities, you definitely want to have the cute brand-name bag and matching UGGS,” says Amanda Cordova, a McCormick senior. “It’s common to see North Face on every sorority girl. Instead of a jacket it’s, ‘Oh, you have a North Face.'”

Economics professor Mark Witte says he found a Northwestern sorority handbook a few years ago with a page dedicated to, “What’s wrong with a bare face (without makeup)? When you look your best you do your best and it reflects well on the house.”

“It was an explicit form of coaching people, and if they don’t follow, they’re letting down the group,” Witte says.

Despite the apparent materialism at NU, Cordova – who has a friend at University of Califonia-Los Angeles – adds that, compared to schools such as UCLA, NU sisters judge sorority hopefuls based on their personalities, not their brand-name clothing.

Not all NU students wear Sevens and own a Coach purse. Hayden estimates that the majority of students care about brands. And NU has various styles, such as bohemian, classic, preppy, thrift-store and “I just don’t care.” “You have people who roll out of bed and go to class in pajamas,” Hayden says. “And then there’s my friend who’ll wake up early to do her make-up and make sure she wears her brand-name stuff.”

Ryan Erickson, a Weinberg freshman, says he doesn’t care about clothes.

“My philosophy is wear what will allow me to blend in,” Erickson says. “There are some token stores I shop at, like Gap or whatever department store. That doesn’t attract too much attention. I shop with my friends. They’re better at shopping than me.”

Kintzer, on the other hand, says she cares a lot about where her clothes come from, but could care less about brand names. “I personally try to buy clothes that don’t involve sweatshop labor, which is pretty difficult,” she says. “But generally, I try to go for things that are less expensive and not brand identifiable.”

When some students first came to NU, they were shocked that their friends would pay hundreds of dollars for brand-name clothes without hesitation.

Says Weinberg junior Jama Bernard: “I met friends who would spend a couple hundred dollars on jeans like it was nothing, and I was like, ‘What?!'”

Comparisons: Other Colleges

So how does NU’s alleged brand-name snobbery compare to other colleges and our old high schools? Why is it that, next to other schools, NU students put a premium on upper-echelon brands like Coach and Burberry – or do they?

Like NU, certain other colleges carry stereotypes about their dress and token brand names: Ivy League students wear preppy and overpriced brands, and liberal arts schools have unique and eclectic clothing, while state school students wear laid-back jeans and T-shirts, students say.

“At University of Wisconsin, it’s more of a party school, so they wear tighter and revealing tops,” says Hayden, who hears of such trends from friends at colleges across the country. “Cornell is in the middle of nowhere, so they’re very laid-back and can wear the clothes from (off of) their floor. My friend from Reed is free-spirited and goofy and she searches the thrift store racks with her friends. In California, it’s probably straight designer clothing.”

Ivy League schools, while cited as abundantly preppy, add their own twist to the classic style. “A very close friend of mine goes to Middlebury – it’s like prep center there,” says Erickson. “It’s a scene out of a Martha Vineyard’s country club. They dress in the ubiquitous popped collar, J Crew, Polo, Nantucket Reds – pink pants that signal you vacation in Martha Vineyard in the summer.”

State schools are tagged as laid back with a foundation of school spirit to guide their wardrobes. UCLA is all about the school colors and logo, and wear them on sweatshirts, shorts, hats, everything, Cordova says. “The bookstore is an entire mall of UCLA merchandise,” she says.

Nikki Acierno, a textiles and clothing junior at Ohio State University, says her peers aren’t the type to dress up for class. They wear school gear, Hollister, North Face and Abercrombie – brands that fit the college lifestyle. “Prada isn’t a common brand,” Acierno says. “I don’t see many people trying to show off. And I don’t think it’s financial – our atmosphere is just more relaxed.”

At Ivy Leagues, the pressure to wear just the right brand name is acute, and you can be shunned for not fitting a certain mold, says Sebastian Vassouli, an economics and economics history sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania.

“It’s like a barrier,” Vassouli says. “If you don’t have a certain brand, you can’t talk to certain people. If I don’t have a collared shirt tucked in with Armani shoes, I can’t approach a certain type of girl.”

Since when did guys have to wear Armani shoes, not only to impress a girl, but to be deemed worthy of talking to? Since we started college, Kintzer says. “At my high school, people wore Abercrombie and Fitch, but now it’s a whole different ball game,” she says. “Here there’s more money involved, so that takes it to a whole new level.”

Most students agree that there’s less socioeconomic diversity at NU than at their high schools. And students whose parents can afford to foot a $40,000 tuition bill can spare the cash for designer brands.

But Kris Rottmuller, a Weinberg sophomore, argues that all schools have a similar level of brand consciousness, despite how expensive the brands might be. “Northwestern is the same as a lot of other schools,” Rottmuller says. “(University of) Illinois and Harvard are all on the same level. The same amounts of people are wearing brand name clothes or fit into a certain style.”

What’s in a (brand) name?

Imagine two purses. Both are black leather, simple and small, with a shiny strap. The only difference is that one says “Prada” and the other says “Prado.” Which one’s better?

“If you have the money, why not buy the real thing?” Hirsch says.

Hirsch, a member of the Facebook.com group “Proud To Flip My Collar, Walk In My Uggs, Stay Warm With My Burberry Scarf, and Only Wear Sevens,” says brand names are a look and a stigma that he cannot explain. “If you want to look your best, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he says. “It’s only when it gets competitive that it’s ridiculo
us.”

Most students say they wear brand names not to compete, but to blend in. Brands are an easy way to craft a style and support a social group.

“It’s fun to have a brand name,” Cordova says. “Especially at Northwestern, a lot of people are well-off and have a lot of brand names, and it’s fun to be a part of that. Every once in a while, you have to have something that you’ve worked hard for and that you’re proud of.”

But some students don’t see the point of brand names. “I consider buying Prada or Seven jeans useless, pointless and pretentious,” Erickson says. “It’s stupid if you look at the resources that make them expensive: They were made in Hong Kong instead of China. Whatever.”

Many students see a vast difference between the purses with the letter “a” and the letter “o.” The first is known as one of the most upscale brands around; the latter is a cheap knock-off – but both, to most people, look exactly the same. This strange logic occurs because of the importance of a status symbol, Kintzer says.

“We are trained to believe that people who are well off deserve their wealth because they’re hard-working and occupy a better, higher place in society,” she says. “And they have more to offer in terms of where they can go, what they can do, people they would know, things like that.”

Witte says consumers digest this information in their daily lives. “The brand acquires a cache from friends and advertisements that imbues the product with positive traits we’d like to associate with ourselves, like attractiveness and stylishness,” he says. “These beer commercials show goofy guys attracting beautiful girls. Brands are the outward indicators of success.”

And sometimes, brands give us something to work for, something to dream about.

“In many developing countries, people go for brand names,” says anthropology Prof. Karen Hansen. “It allows the imagination to run with the sorts of worlds people would like to be in, where they could buy a particular thing. Maybe it’s not the clothing, but what sort of story people make up about it.”4

Music and Weinberg junior Rebecca Huval is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].