Style at Oxford is an ecstatically productive study in collective nouns. A stable of Ralph Lauren logos, a locus of nylon Longchamps, an orchard of Apple products. It is wholly socially acceptable to sport a cricket jumper in the club, voi in full Scottish ceremonial dress, and pair a Fendi Baguette with your Halloween costume. (I think we should stop being so accepting).
How do you spot an Oxford student? Look for AirPods and library glasses, eyes branded with dark circles and lips glossed with Rhode. The merch is always college (apart from Blues kit, uni-wide is for tourists), or alumni stash (note the boarding school baseball caps). After all, are you even wearing a coat if it doesn’t allow strangers to guess your full name, current living location and (most importantly) university? A college puffer is a walking economy of personal information and academic prestige, and a double-barrelled name fits quite happily into the five character allowance for initials.
The original fear that you must wear business formal to your Oxford interview – “Mum, is my shirt collar clearly visible on the Teams call?” – is not necessarily so misguided. Everyone is always in some variant of smart casual. In Michaelmas, long wool coats creep out and pavements swarm with the yellow stitching of lace-up Docs. People accessorise here, with a plague of that one particular stripy scarf. Canvas totes from The Covered Market or Blackwell’s advertise the personality traits of eating food and being able to read, whilst the London massive support local businesses with The Notting Hill shopping bag.
Ball attire is standard black tie, whilst formals are accessorised with the sartorial translation of your Prelims grade: either a scholars gown or a (tactfully named) commoners gown. Crew dates, on the other hand, normally entail dressing as a thotty elf/thotty deer/respectable professional from Magic Mike and wandering the streets of Oxford whilst passers-by remark in loud voices: “It’s not Halloween anymore, is it?”
Sub fusc, like many things at Oxford, has a Latin etymology and is not as rigidly enforced as the website’s gleeful use of bold font would have you believe. The LinkedIn profile photo of choice shows a prim velvet ribbon bow, teeny-tiny miniskirt, and gigantesque Docs (removed under wobbly Exam Schools’ tables during Prelims papers). And the endurance of a student prepared to sit a three-hour exam in 6 inch platform stilettos is admirable.
Yet clothes also serve as a class marker. Here the most likely balaclava is a cashmere shroud, tweed is horrifyingly unironic and your Rad Cam seat neighbour is using her Goyard tote (a silent epidemic of one grand printed canvas) as a makeshift pillow. Hoodies are normally Carhartt drip and trackies are Blueblood. Getting dressed becomes an exercise in keeping up appearances. The whimsy of going to the library like an aestheticized Dickensian orphan – oh, my satchel and hand-knitted mittens! – is exhausting. Perhaps style at Oxford is ultimately about learning how not to let the mask slip.
