You’ll dress only in attire specially sanctioned by us. You’ll conform to the identity we give you. You’ll stand out in many ways. Your entire image is crafted to leave a lasting memory with anyone you encounter. Silence your fashion sense. You’re no longer part of that Culture. You’re above the Culture. Over it. Beyond it. We’re “them.” We’re “they.” We are the Fashion Club.
You have seen them in Lectures. You have seen them at The Summit. You have seen them walking around campus. Who are they?
This unofficial group — dubbed ‘Fashion Club’ started out as a few like-minded people banding together to coordinate their dressing in Law School. Over the span of 2 weeks, the group has grown to over 20 members and this includes only the Year 1 students! Sensing that the Fashion Club is brimming with potential to develop into an official ‘CCA’, I decided to interview its founder, Wu Guowei.
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Banding together a group of students and deciding on a dress theme is something quite unusual. What made you decide to start this unofficial club?
The idea came about when a group of us sitting at the front of torts lecture on the first week of school started talking. (Aditi, JiaYing, Dawn and Sam Yi Ting and me)
We talked about how some of our peers had very nice dressing. I don’t know how the conversation got to us imagining how cool it would be if the whole cohort co-ordinated our dressing on some days of the week. We started throwing out a few ideas. Then I said, “Why not?”.
I posted on the RAG Facebook Group (with visual aids) calling for people to co-ordinate their dressing on the next Tuesday. We decided to name each theme day with an adjective before the day. Eg. “Dork Tuesday” and “Ethnic Thursday”.
We opened up the themed-day option to the rest of the cohort by posting it on The Hatchet — NUS Law Freshmen Orientation Facebook group after a successful “Dork Tuesday”.
(It’s cool to be a dork!)
This was not intended as an “unofficial club” to begin with, but we genuinely hoped that our batch could catch on and have some fun. It would be a good way for us to bond as it give people one more topic to talk about, and one more reason to interact.
It really touched our hearts when people begin posting pictures up on what their group of friends wore. There’s something about everyone cohering to a theme that makes your heart warm, don’t you think?
What are some long term goals that you would like the club to achieve?
I want themed-day dressing to be a fun thing where everyone can take part. Hopefully it will to become a culture/tradition in law school.
It is difficult to say if this will work, but if we don’t continue advertising and calling for people to dress up, we will never know.
Based on the Facebook updates, there have been only 2 dressing events so far — Ethnic and Geek. How are the fashion themes decided and will there be an increase in frequency of the dressing events?
Oh dear, you missed out on Pastel and Floral Saturday and Monday Blues!
We receive many suggestions all the time and are often at logger-heads over which theme to impose when. We always come to a compromise within the team. We could perhaps in the future keep up with actual fashion and decide our themes from there.
We were initially aiming for 3 days a week every even week. Then we realised that dressing up 3 days in a week can be quite tedious. (And that we would run out of ideas soon.) So we decided to change it to once (or twice) a week.
(I must have been feeling too blue to have missed them…)
Are you considering registering it as an official club activity? Some ideas would be to educate students on etiquette, grooming, discuss and follow updates on fashion trends, taking part in pageants, etc.
You have very good ideas. Would you like to join us?
I think your idea is brilliant. Apart from being bright in our minds, I think it is important for us to be able to present ourselves decently and a “Fashion Club” could help in educating the cohort.
If the response from the cohort is good, I think it would be possible that my friends and I would consider registering a “Fashion Club”, although I think we would have to look to see if there’s a parallel in KRC so we can link up with them.
Within your club, who do you think is the ‘best-dressed’ / ‘most fashionable’?
We don’t exactly have a club, but of the people who dress up, I think there are many people who dress well. I particularly remember one girl who wore plain clothes during Pastel and Floral Saturday. I was slightly disappointed at her blatant bold colours until she turned her head, bringing a gigantic flower hairpin into view.
Again, I felt the warmth in my heart.
How does one sign up for this club and how often will the club conduct activities?
You don’t have to sign up for the club, really just look out for my posts on the FB group. Then again, I think the Freshmen Facebook group might not be the most extensive advertising platform, but we are hesitant to post on “Overheard”. 🙁
We are aiming once or twice a week on our lecture days (Monday Tuesday Thursday) to allocate as dress up days.
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Many Thanks to Guowei for taking time to answer the interview questions!
It certainly isn’t difficult to spot members of the Fashion Club during their dressing events, so do join me in complementing their dressings whenever you see them. It will definitely be something phenomenal if seniors start to join in the dress events. In fact, NUS Law could be the faculty where this dress culture buds! If you want to join in the fun and at the same time free yourself from the trouble of deciding your clothes, stay tune to Overhead for more juicy updates on future dress themes by the Fashion Club.
Till next time!
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Text by Marvin Chua (Year 1)