Fashion scene in Manipal – Does it lack the real panache?

There are more than ten thousand youngsters currently residing in Manipal from all over the country. In a place with such a big population of young guns between the age of 18-25, fashion definitely has significance.

Fashion is an expression of one’s inner self and not a reflection of every one’s expectation of what should be expressed.  This is my personal belief that fashion is not just about wearing the trendiest clothes but it’s more about wearing something which makes one feel confident and comfortable with oneself.

This little town has a wide bandwidth when it comes to fashion. First of all, there is a set of pupils with a perfect dressing sense. They somehow get everything right, neatly tucked up during the college hours, relaxed with shorts or tracks during the evening time and even during the parties, they are up to perfection. Their wardrobe always has something appropriate for any and every occasion.

There are also a set of people with little fashion sense, the second set. They sometimes get it right and mess it up other times. Most of the Manipal population falls in this set. The clothing and the colour combination is usually decent, but an occasion or a big party is where they mess it up. It’s too much for them to handle. While some are overdressed for the occasion, the rest are extremely underdressed.

And then there is a third set of people, the ones with the disastrous fashion sense. The population belonging to this set has never been introduced to the world of fashion.

Most of the MIT professors surely do fall in the third set. You can often see a professor going to a class wearing a fluorescent orange color shirt and a white trouser. Most of the nerds around also fall in this set.(No offence!) More than “they don’t dress well” the case is “they don’t want to dress well”, this is because they don’t give a damn about it! Getting an A in every subject is all they can think. Dressing well will be the last on their priority list even after having mock drills on earthquakes and floods.

The place where a person belongs to has a vital role to play in deciding his/her fashion sense. It also plays a part in deciding whether he/she fall in the first, second or the third set. For instance, an urban girl will most probably have a better sense of fashion compared to the girls from the small towns. The former tend to fall in the first set and the latter in the second or the third. Small town fellows initially strive hard to get promoted from the third set to the second set and from the second set to the first set. They suffer from wardrobe malnutrition. But these differences start fading when they stay in the campus for a while. They observe, they learn. So as a student passes enough time around here he definitely improves his fashion sense and goes through an essential wardrobe transformation. Because seriously, nothing is as refreshing as seeing someone walk down the street in their own little world of awesomeness!