It’s always irked me that we have such a humdrum style rap. The college guidebooks my younger sister is wading through have the same bleak style forecast as the tomes I read four years ago. According to the 2010 edition of Yale’s Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, the typical Wildcat is an “upper middle class prep, complete with Uggs and North Face-clad exteriors.” I’ll leave the socioeconomic part of that pigeonholing for another conversation or Memo, but have we truly been stuck in a style rut since 2006? For the weekly’s first-ever fashion extravaganza issue, we’re trying to make sense of our school’s fashion landscape. Many of us seem to have transitioned, or at least rotated, from Uggs to Hunter rain boots since last fall (check out our breakdown of the unofficial NU uniform in our cover spread). For full disclosure’s sake, I own both of the aforementioned items, as do many of the chicest students I spot on this campus. They (and I, as I’d like to hope) just try to integrate these functional staples with zanier vintage finds and thoughtful takes on experimental trends. Also for our cover, Dana Farber took some of those experimental trends for a test-run on the catwalk that is our campus – maybe you spotted her wearing lace bunny ears or serious shoulder padding by the Rock the other day. Whether our latest issue leaves you damning the proliferation of plaid, (re)considering a foray into the fashion industry after reading our What If or trying on a denim shirt just for kicks (more on that in Why We Like), I’d say we’ve done our job.