Fully covering Boston's fashion scene would be a nearly impossible task. As a city with over 50 universities in the metropolitan area, Boston has a demographic that is not only skewed toward a younger population, but also a diverse one. Students from all over the country and the world call Boston their temporary home, making the city's fashion style more of a melting pot than anything else. East Coast sophistication blends with West Coast ease, while Southern lightheartedness is thrown in with New York gravity.
Nevertheless, there are still a few generalizations to be made in terms of Beantown's overall style. Penney Pinette, a fashion designer and costume shop supervisor in Tufts' Department of Drama and Dance, creates and markets her designs with an eye toward satiating an academically minded Boston crowd.
"Everyone here is incredibly educated — it's a huge college town — so you're selling to people with an interest in intellect," she said.
"They're not interested in frivolity as much," she continued. "[They] think about the clothes they wear and think about how they want to put themselves together and if it's practical but also stylish. In New York and LA, people are more excited about fashion, and they're more willing to just invest in things for fun. People are a little more serious with where they spend their money here."
Sophomore Jessica Fleischer, who blogs about fashion, agreed that the city has a style all its own.
"In all of its glory, I would say [Boston fashion] is kind of a yuppie, preppy style but with a flair. You see the Lacoste and Ralph Lauren polos but with a twist — with a little bit more of upscale designer influences," she said.
The perfect piece for a Bostonian to have in their closet, she said, is a well-tailored blazer — a solid fit for both Boston's fashion and weather climates.
Yet even as Boston's college atmosphere makes for a heterogeneous sense of style, it also lends the city a sense of unity. The intellectual environment translates into a particular manner of dressing that is both practical and deliberate. The more outrageous fashions that populate New York and Paris runways often don't embody the smartness that resonates with Bostonians.
"There's definitely art in fashion, but that's not the only goal of it," Pinette said. "But then, at some point, somebody has to button it and put their keys in their pockets, so it becomes an item."
And yet, despite the practical nature of Boston style, the city's one and only fashion week is held in September to showcase spring fashions, which doesn't seem to make much sense for a city that spends nearly three quarters of the year in cooler temperatures.
"That's always surprised me," Kieran Lewis, a sophomore and brand ambassador for clothing line Jack Wills, said. "I've always thought of Boston as a place where fall and winter [are] a very integral part of the year. I see most of the fashion, most of the interesting things that I pick up on, usually in fall and winter."
Still, Lewis said, despite the city's unique style, it doesn't rival the world's major fashion centers.
"Boston is not a fashion hub," Lewis added. "The fashion week here is considerably smaller than any of the major shows in, say, Paris. Right now, maybe they can only do one fashion week a year."
Pinette similarly ranked Boston as only fifth or sixth on the list in terms of U.S. cities with significant fashion weeks and admitted that the scene here is disappointing.
Yet this seems to be a symptom of unlived potential, rather than city-wide ambivalence. Venues for fashion shows do exist in Boston, but they are often too expensive for designers to use. Furthermore, while there are plenty of places in the greater Boston area to get a degree in fashion, such as the School of Fashion Design on Newbury Street, Boston University and University of Massachusetts Amherst, many of the students quickly flee to Los Angeles or New York after college. Those who stay face limited resources for promoting their designs.
On the other hand, Lewis called Boston a great location for European brands to test the waters of the U.S. market.
"A lot of companies in Europe come out to Boston first," Lewis said. "The U.S. is a very large market — the amount of planning and marketing and strategy that goes into expanding to it, I think they start here as a base, since Boston is a relatively safe city in terms of fashion."
This suggests that the market for clothing is healthy in Boston, possibly due to its large population of young students, a group often more willing to experiment than older consumers. Individual designers, however, continue to find it hard to find success without the promotional help of a larger fashion week.
Fashion at Tufts
Colleges that offer fashion degrees aren't the only places where students influence the fashion world. Pinette recently held a fashion show showcasing her fall coat designs, and Lux, Tufts China Care's annual charity fashion show, is entering its fourth consecutive year.
Fleischer became interested in fashion through her past modeling work. In her blog, "Chic in Every City," she gives tips for women trying to navigate the plus-size fashion world. Lewis has worked with Jack Wills for three years now and became its brand ambassador for Tufts after the company expanded to its current Newbury Street location.
Their attitudes toward Tufts' fashion scene were cautiously optimistic.
"I definitely am inspired by Tufts," Fleischer said, falling on the more positive side of the spectrum. "One of the things I fell in love with was that there's this crazy cool sense of style. Students here really care about what they wear. You see kids in pajamas here, but for the most part you see a lot of diversity and personal style."
In describing the environment, Pinette emphasized the dual nature of Tufts students' interest in fashion.
"You have the sweatpants-and-Uggs culture that you're constantly fighting against [as a designer], but then there are still students who dress to the nines, you know, even when they're sick," she said.
Like Boston, Tufts also boasts a diverse population, bringing together thousands of students from all over the globe. The international climate makes an overall generalization of style nearly impossible, as students often incorporate their national culture into what they wear. While one could say that many students fall into the indie niche, there is certainly no shortage of prep, grunge, bohemian and more.
Fashion as expression
A lot of negative connotations are associated with fashion — the idea that it's frivolous or that it promotes negative body image, to name only a few. While there is a grain of truth to these arguments, there is also far more to style than being a size zero or looking attractive. At the very least, it's a way to express onself. Wearing a bright color says something different than wearing all black, and wearing a v-neck sweater will say something different than wearing a halter top.
"I see it very much as another way to express something," Lewis said. "It could be an emotion or whatever, but it's an expression. You can do so much with it. You can be playful with it, you can be very serious. I like the versatility. It allows you to be very creative, to exercise your imagination, which I feel like we don't get a chance to do that much anymore."
Pinette explained that people naturally draw assumptions about others from what they wear and how they look, whether they mean to or not.
"I was just thinking about that saying ‘Don't judge a book by its cover' the other day, and I think that it's the worst concept because you always judge a book by its cover and you judge people by the way they're dressed — not negatively judge them, but you'll think that girl looks really fun or that woman looks sophisticated, and in a positive way you characterize them by the way they look," she said.
For Fleischer, fashion offers a way to boost one's self-esteem.
"To me, what is most attractive about fashion is how it makes people feel. It's so cool that putting on a shirt that fits well can make someone feel so great about themselves, just because they feel beautiful in it," she said. "I just think there's a tangible difference in the way people act when they are wearing something that they feel really confident about and feel really comfortable in."
