Of the many transitions facing international first-years here at Wellesley is the wardrobe adjustment needed to live in this new climate and culture. Students from the Middle East confront colder temperatures, different weather, and a more sexualized and individualistic culture. Although these students want to wear clothes in which they will feel comfortable, they often try to retain their sense of style from their native country in purchasing new clothes for this unfamiliar climate. In this case it is clear that maintaining a connection to their family, religion, and childhood memories is more important than conforming to the fashion standards here at Wellesley.
Nur
Nur is a first-year student from Turkey who is a practicing Muslim. She has worn a hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women, since coming to Wellesley. She explains stresses that the hijab is her choice, and that not all of the women in her family wear one. As she goes through her drawer full of colorful scarves, she tells me that her mother is also “covered,” but her aunt is not, and no one judges a woman who does not wear a hijab because it is regarded as an intensely personal decision within her family. She was only able to start wearing the scarf full time when she moved to the United States because in Turkey no religious symbols were allowed at her school. “I didn’t like it,” she says, “but I had to get an education.”
When I ask her if she will explain why she wears the hijab, she tells me it is hard to explain to people, but she knows the meaning of it within her culture. She tells me it is a symbol of her commitment to her religion. “Plus,” she says, “it’s more convenient now, because you have to have your head and hair covered when you pray, so I had to carry my covering with me in my bag and take it out every time [I pray.] It got to be a hassle [but] now it’s easier.”
She believes that Wellesley is a safe space for her to display her religion and that in Boston in general “People are very accepting.” When asked if her style has evolved since moving to Wellesley, she replies that it hasn’t changed much. It’s not as cold here as she expected. Modesty is an extremely central element of her style, so she finds it hard to shop for things in American stores. “You have to hunt,” she says while showing me her most recent purchase, a long loose knit dress which she will wear as a long top with jeans underneath. She often buys dresses and wears them as shirts with jeans underneath and a long cardigan over the top. She prefers cardigans and shirts which “cover her butt” because she does not want her figure to be too visible, especially around male visitors. Around female friends in our dorm in the evenings she will sometimes wear tighter yoga pants or let her hair be visible, but she tries to be covered as much as possible in the event of a male visitor stopping by.
Nur describes her style as “simple, yet elegant… maybe that is not the right word… matching, though, and clean cut.” Black is her favorite color to wear because it is elegant and goes with everything, she says as she shows me her abaya, a black chiffon garment that she wears like a loose robe over her American style clothing. It has some golden beaded accents on the front, but is otherwise very simple.
A common theme among her favorite clothes is that they were all bought in Turkey or made by “local Turkish designers.” Her parents buy all of her clothing and she does not buy things second-hand because “they do not have that [in Turkey]” although she would be open to borrowing or sharing clothes with other people if they fit her style. For example, she recently borrowed a Pakistani dress from a friend for a fancy occasion because she did not being any formal outfits with her. She does not pay attention to designer names because modern trends in fashion do not fit her style.
Nur smiles as she tells me about how when she went shopping with her mother, her mom would always say things [imitates voice] “well, it looks awful, but it’s your decision whether to buy it.” Now that she is here she prefers to shop with friends.
Although she does not often talk about home or her faith in social situations, I can tell by going through her favorite clothes with her that she is still extremely connected to Turkish Muslim culture. She goes through all of her two dozen scarves, lying them out on the bed and telling me little details about each one. She does not consider scarves to be an accessory, since they are such an integral part of her outfits. The only Western accessory she enjoys is an assortment of funky little rings which she picks out each day, because her hands and face are the only skin that shows.
Katie
Katie is a sophomore who was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in Egypt and she is Caucasian and Roman Catholic.
She gets style advice from “my mom… and my brain?” The first thing she takes note of each day when she gets dressed is the weather, which was the main adjustment she made when coming to Wellesley. “It’s a LOT hotter in Egypt,” she says, but admits that the modest fashion standards in Egypt meant that she did not own a lot of shorts or skimpy clothing. Like Nur, she tells me that her style has “probably not changed that much – except I own a few more coats.” She has a lot of strong opinions about American trends. On the “definite no” list are: shorts, low waisted jeans, jeggings (“I look at people and I’m like, ‘You’re actually an attractive person, why are you like wearing jeggings?’, sweatpants, T-shirts, and sweatshirts. Her favorite clothing trend is headbands, because she decided to follow her mother’s example and not get her ears pierced. She likes to splurge on headbands at Nordstrom or other designer stores because she does not wear other jewelry and calls headbands “the jewelry of the head.”
Although she is not religious, another way Katie keeps close to her family while living abroad is by wearing a Saint Catherine of Siena pendant which her brother gave her while she was sick a few years ago, because he is very devoutly Roman Catholic and wearing the necklace reminds her of him.
Katie shops three times a year with her mother (for spring, winter, and fall). Her mother is a strong influence on her fashion because her mother was a former model (and Katie herself was offered a modeling job by Ralph Lauren!). In fact, the high-waisted tweed pants she is wearing during the interview are her mother’s pants from thirty years ago. She is the same size as her mother and is very influenced by 1950’s fashion. Her mother taught her to accentuate her tiny waist and always dress to impress. In our French class she is always better dressed than all of the students and even sometimes our professor, and tells me that she would “never wear sweatpants to class. NEVER. I am very averse to sweatpants. Maybe if I had just had surgery and I was coming from the hospital and it was the only thing I was comfortable in – actually, yeah it would have to be a life or death situation.”
Like Nur, Katie uses her clothing to keep connected to her family and culture. While in Egypt, she tells me that the students at her international school would place a high emphasis on clothing because it showed where they were from, so she would travel back to the States several times a year with her mother and buy whatever was in American stores to show off when she got home. “Going to an American mall was like the highlight of my trip,” she explains, “it was like being able to take a little bit of America home with me.” Now that she lives in the States again, she keeps her T-shirt collection (although she would NEVER wear a T-shirt other than for exercise) to keep her memories of over 50 places and events. Her dad worked for the U.N. so he brought her back a T-shirt from every place that he went. The one sweatshirt she owns is for the Shakespeare Society here at Wellesley College, which she “bought in solidarity” but she has never worn it. She owns one pair of jeans, which she admits are “soccer mom jeans” because she feels it is “inherently American to own jeans”.
Although she has always been proud of her American roots, Katie is firmly devoted to the more eclectic and modest styles she adopted moving around through “Egypt, Germany, Morocco, Tunisia, Oman …. A lot of the Middle East, which is why I feel that I dress slightly more conservative than most people”. She keeps an article of clothing from each country, such as “these awful pants from Ghana which are really so patchy but this woman made them for me” or “this glittery traditional Egyptian dress”. The clothing she keeps at college are “my useful clothing” while the “memory clothing” is kept at her family’s house in Nantucket.
Conclusion
Although they are different ages, races, religions, and nationalities, Nur and Katie both share the same desire to remain close to their families and traditions through their clothing. For Nur, the hijab and abaya are ways for her to connect to her Muslim faith, and her mother, who is one of her inspirations for wearing the hijab. For Katie American designers were an important part of her self-expression while she lived internationally, while now her diverse yet conservative wardrobe serves as a representation of her many exciting experiences before Wellesley, many of which took place in the Middle East. I was surprised how adamantly they both denied changing their style to conform to typical Wellesley fashion, but very impressed with their pride in their cultures. They both find Wellesley a safe space but resist societal pressures to conform by buying clothes internationally and not paying attention to trends, but rather what they feel comfortable and beautiful wearing.