Fashions on the campus

The tendency among college students to pay more and more attention to fashion is continuously growing. With the exception of the poorer students, almost all students regard it as-‘Fashion Parmo Dharma’.

It is an essential form of their duty o march with fashion and sometimes more quicker than fashions and actually set afoot a new fashion movement or fashion development. A visit to a college of today would indeed be an interesting experiment for those who wish to know something about the influence of fashions on these youth and vice-versa.

Boys and girls spend much of their precious time on personal grooming and dress. They are seen dressed in showy, gaudy and colourful outfits. They are perfect connoisseurs in the matter of dress and eye one another’s clothes with keen interest. Each tries to excel the other in the quality and design of his or her clothes. Critical remarks are freely gifted to classmates whose suits do not sit upon them properly or whose trousers do not match their shirts while envious glances are cast upon those who are striking in design and perfect in tailoring.

Everyone aims at wearing his or her clothes to the best advantage and producing a favourable impression upon their girl friends and boy friends (BFs and GFs). It seems as if costly clothes and styles are an additional qualification along with their Bachelor’s degree. This dandyism has disastrous results as students keep adjusting their hairstyles and nailprints and pay scant attention to class lectures. They look appreciably at their own nicely tailored outfits and get filled with the comfortable feeling that they are not behind anyone. Therefore the number of fops is on the increase in colleges. 

Almost every boy keeps in one of his pockets a comb with which he makes frequent styling gestures in front of girl’s colleges or his colleagues. A trend among college boys is to wear what are known as ‘muscle shirts’, ‘cargoes’ and tight-fitting jeans, which bring out in clear relief the ‘behinds’ of the wearer. These are really crazy fashions, which should be modified. It is not only the male students who are eager to look smart and modern, females go two steps further. They regard fashion as their special prerogative.

They think that in trying to look fashionable, boys are encroaching the domain that rightfully belong  to them. Girls have a natural and inborn love for pretty dresses and in colleges they get a real opportunity to demonstrate their love. Formerly they used to come to colleges dressed in colourful sarees with gay borders and tight-fitting jumpers designed to bring their figures into relief. Then the time came of tight-fitting ‘salwar kurtas’ and tomboy styles of ‘bell-bottoms’. But these are now outdated and their place has been taken by gabardines, stretchables, T-shirts and cut sleeved suits, which gives prominence to, and accentuate their anatomical proportions and curves. They generally have short hair and try to look like boys. These girls also spend a great deal of money on cosmetics which they use in extravagant quantities to make up for the lack of natural colouring. Their fashion no doubt shows taste and ingenuity and they enhance the charm and appeal of the wearer but they are a distraction to boys. Scents and perfumes are used by these Juliets to excite and stir their Romeos.

It is not only fashion in dress that marks college students. Going to movies, costly restaurants and cyber cafes and bunking classes are also part of fashion. Every students thinks it desirable to know all about famous entertainment web sites and leading Hollywood and Bollywood stars. They may forget the formulae of mathematics and theories of Political Science, but they do not forget the e-mail addresses of their GFs and BFs, and the names of films popular stars may have acted in. Large blowups of these stars adorn students’ rooms.

Similarly, drinking alcohol and coffee in discos and pool clubs is regarded as a mark of prestige and advancement. Moreover, the habit of smoking being consciously cultivated by boys and girls and to have a packet of a leading brand of cigarettes shows that this chap or this girls is keeping pace with the times. But is it the right way? Evidently these people are not taking their studies seriously; they regard going to college as a mere hobby or recreation and examinations and class lectures as evil. Looking attractive is their chief task. This craze for fashion is proving highly detrimental to them by usurping all their attention and time.