What to Wear?

There's nothing so appalling as a handkerchief hemmed on top so the stitching shows," a sophomore in North House recently observed. "Rolled edges, of course, are the only acceptable kind." This sentiment is echoed at hundreds of American colleges. Concern for such details is not, in fact, above young people on campuses today. Sometimes careful dressers are hard to spot: to the untrained eye, they seem to blend in with the rest.

Absence of socks, for example, is a clear tipoff that extra, not less, care is being taken. The habitual wearing of fine leather next to the skin necessitates an air of nonchalence whose cultivation takes a great deal of effort.

Do not let untucked shirttails fool you, either. One-hundred-per-cent cotton hanging out the back of a sweater did not get there by accident. Anything synthetic there, however, is bogus.

And white shirts go with everything. If a friend has not been seen in anything but white since you met, he probably has at least 30 or 35 identical shirts at home. That is all he buys on purpose. Sticking to white means taste.

And yet. The European dresser takes neatness seriously: The shirt--tucked in; the shoelaces--tied; the hair--combed. There is absolutely no substitute for refined taste when one is selecting from a range of articles that stretches across the Atlantic from Paris and Milan to 5th Ave., skips across 66th and all the rest of the way down Park. Armani, Ungaro, Valentino, Versace, Fendi, Dior, St. Laurent. Not many college students are able to pull off these designs. The few are bound to retain a high profile in any classroom.

The big decision for men is whether or not to wear the black tie. Tuxedos grace all major campuses and show no sign of fading away in the near future. Many wait until Senior Year to buy their blacks for this reason. Don't fool yourself. Formal is here to stay.

There is little basic difference among styles at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Georgetown; only the proportions vary. Slobs are free to compile their own catalogue of clothing: those pictured here are, in contrast, among the finest dressers at colleges on the Eastern seaboard.