At parties, people tend to gravitate toward those people who are dressed similarly, in hopes of bypassing awkward interactions.
The liner notes of the record 13-Point Program To Destroy America by Washington punk band Nation of Ulysses says: “To dress well, as clothing and fashion, are the only things which we — the kids — being utterly disenfranchised, have any control over.”
We can construe this as an overarching generalization by a bunch of young misfits, disenchanted by the world around them. But they’ve got a point. We are ultimately defined by how we dress because it is both the simplest and most apparent of all artistic statements.
For instance, in a crowded party or classroom, we flock to those who dress who like us, hoping there are more connections to be made. It’s not outlandish to think if we’re sporting a similarly cut sweater to someone else in the same room, then we might be able to also bond over music, film, literature and other aspects of personal philosophy.
Clothing is, in many ways, a small sample of an individual’s integral hardwiring, as well as something that will ultimately define whether we choose to approach them. Think about it like this: If we’re thrust into a strange situation with unknown people and forced to interact, we’ll gravitate toward those with whom we can make the most basic associations.
Even when our dressing efforts are lackluster, we’re making a statement about who we are and how we see ourselves. The disheveled will ultimately seek out the disheveled, using their disdain for fashion as an initial bonding point for deeper, more meaningful discussions.
In my own life, for a good two or three years, I would always wear my LCD Soundsystem T-shirt when meeting new people because it provided an obvious conversation stimulator. It made the lonely and daunting process of forming new friendships much more simplistic because I had already supplied the point of common ground. I knew, eventually, I’d find those with similar tastes in music and art, but because of my T-shirt, I was skipping several days of prodding and questioning my peers for any strands of like-mindedness.
Whether or not Nation of Ulysses were a tad melodramatic in their comment that, “clothing and fashion are the only things which we have any control over,” is open to interpretation. But one thing is for sure: If we choose to change how we dress, we might open ourselves up to a whole new realm of social connections.
