My sister, aside from being one of my best friends in the whole world and completely adorable, is exceedingly well-educated. She has a BA from Harvard, a JD from Berkeley, and an MSW and PhD from Berkeley too. As you might expect, her work involves other extremely well-educated people. And, in fact, in her new job she is supervising PhD students.
She called me the other day and said, “I’m dropping [x=10x cute daughter] off at Dad’s house and I should be free at 12:30 and will have about 2-3 hours. Can you meet me at the shopping center? I need clothes for the new job.”
As you can imagine, I met her there. We ran through Nordstrom and Banana Republic, at top speed. She had made the tour of J. Crew a few days before. And here’s what she came up with.
If we deconstruct, this says, I am a manager (I wear a jacket), I am professional and in the mainstream (Banana Republic, J. Crew, Kate Spade), but I am just a little bit alternative, a little bit counter culture (the shoes). That’s appropriate for graduate students in social work.
The deconstruction strikes some as complicated, or having a dress code. It might be complicated, but there’s no code. It’s just the High WASP highly-sensitized social signaling function. You want to make clear who you are and what you are doing, but you don’t want to offend anyone. You really don’t want to offend anyone. Said out loud, it sounds intricate. Lived, it feels articulated. Right.
BTW I left out all the periods in the degrees because it was just way too many…
7 Responses
Love, love, love those shoes! Were they from Nordstrom? I MUST find them! : )
Those shoes and trousers are definitely a must have! I really like the way they compliment each other. I was looking at greatuniversal-online.co.uk for some new summer clothes as my wardrobe desperately needs attention for the lack of summer clothes it has in it. Thanks for the post, a real enjoyable read.
You always post the best trousers, LPC.
Lovely outfit. I have the J-Crew jacket and find that it is perfect for work or play!
Great pants! And that jacket is very cute. It's says serious but with a sense of humor I think.
Apparently the shoes are from a store in Berkeley called Rabat. Morocco is so chic. http://www.rabatshoes.com/. They also have a San Francisco location. Go sister. She always did have style.
Everything is looking awesome.!! Especially those shoes and other accessories.
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