Fashion: Back to School

Once, a college coed might have whiled away her summer boning up on a fourth language, rereading Russian novels, or recording the labyrinthian travels of a psychopathic mouse. That was that. Today, if she’s got her wits (and her checkbook) about her, she winds up such frivolous pursuits in record time, the better to spend what remains of vacation (and her savings account) far away from libraries and laboratories, exploring the nooks and air-conditioned crannies, the dressing rooms and display counters of all available department stores. For times have changed; according to the several million pretty pieces of proof that flooded the nation’s halls of academe this week, it isn’t any longer only what comes out of the stacks that counts on campus but also, and more strikingly, what comes off the racks.

From Pomona, Calif., to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the girls and their wardrobes are the snazziest in years. Gone with the wind are the Shiny-Nosed Adolescent (shirttail flapping over tattered Levi’s), the Blue-Blooded Aristocrat (cashmere sweater, flannel skirt, and a single strand of perfect pearls), the Walleyed Scholar (sloped shoulders, sensible shoes, and a pleated skirt left over from ice-hockey days), and the flocks of Amenable Parrots (kneesocks, muffler, a Peck & Peck raincoat, and a penny for every loafer). In their place these days is a sleekly feathered creature who swings her hair when she walks, wears no makeup, likes to go shopping in a suit that really has pants, and is apt to go dancing in a dress that suggests it be done cheek to cheek.

Frugable Charm. West Coast coeds like “the Scramble Look” best for day —a style that depends upon the combination of as many patterns as possible in a single outfit; the girl who can manage a skillful blend of dots with stripes, checks with tweeds, and plaids with prints, plus patterned stockings, may seem something of an eyesore off campus, but no matter—around the quad she’s the sweetheart of Sigma Chi. For night, U.C.L.A. students slip into something appropriate to “the Discothèque Look”—sleeveless jumpers made sometimes of tweed but more often of velours, bare on top and ruffled at the bottom, the most frugable little nothings around.

Rougher landscapes, like Northwestern, demand a fashion staple like a poncho, a tentlike affair that lends a certain army-surplus charm to fragile freshmen huddled beneath. University of Wisconsin girls wear headbands instead of scarves, are so addicted to sandals that a local shoe repairman declared himself a sandal-maker and set up shop a thong’s throw from campus. For trips to town, the newest thing is a suit with culotte-like pants instead of a skirt. There is also, unaccountably, a sudden passion for pierced ears among otherwise sensible girls in the Ivy League area (four out of every five coeds at the University of Pennsylvania have already taken the step).

Fun, Clean Look. Kilts are just about out all over, particularly in the South, where they have been usurped by high-schoolers, and Bermuda shorts are slowly giving way to full-length slacks or, better still, skirts. Back in the swing, after a decade of use only by Boy Scouts and photographers, is the shoulder-strap bag. “Jiffy” coats—halfway between a coat and a jacket in length —are as popular as Beatles; favorite fabrics are stretchable wools, hottest pattern is houndstooth checks. “The coffee-shop look is out,” says a Philadelphia fashion coordinator. “It’s been replaced by the clean look.” Boston and New York, headquarters for Ivy League shoppers, agree. Charles Stanwood, divisional merchandise manager of New England’s mammoth Jordan Marsh, claims campus fashions are moving toward “the refined look, the fun look, more of a suburban look.” Others feel it is Paris, not suburbia, that has influenced college styles, point to the pants suit and the figure-skimming A-line dress. Nonetheless, whether it is Courreges who gets the credit, or Concord, Mass., Dior or Darien, the fact remains: Betty Coed may not make it through Soc. Sci. 101, but only Daddy is likely to care.