Academic Self-Fashioning

This article on professorial fashion caught my eye. As much as most of us hate to admit that fashion plays a role in our professional lives (we echo Henry David Thoreau’s lament in Walden: “The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same”), the reality is that there are trends and expectations aplenty even in academe.

This got me thinking about the amount of fashion posing that goes on in any profession; higher education certainly is not immune to this, from the grungy Marxist to the cuff-linked development officer to the seersucker-clad law professor to the presidential wannabe’s who wear those trendy rimless glasses. Most campuses have more than a few poseurs in their communities; likewise, we have enough free spirits to keep things interesting (I have fond memories of colleagues who have worn the occasional kilt and bathrobe around campus).

So, which fashion items drive you the craziest as you look around campus? Which do you secretly envy?