Youths and Fashion: Villains or Victims?

By Clive Siachiyako

The phrase “what you wear defines you,” generates gloomy memories and uncertainties in many young fashion fanatics’ minds. It cuts great tension of irritation in the bones of these errand boys of trend-setters. It sounds like something belonging to the Stone Age. To them setting the trend defines everything. Trend-setting tosses these fanatics of fashion into a new life of ‘mind your own business.’ Old fashioned as it may be considered, some youths who claim they are obedient to the old folks’ words of “what you wear defines you” have often provoked nasty gossips. Taking a stroll in the corridors of the University of Zambia (UNZA), you will hear some students gossip about the kind of dressing some of their fellow students expose their eyes to see at the institution.
Different tastes may be? Or simply modernity? Students at UNZA take their freedom to wear what they want without parental comments to the max. Whereas others may call what they are wearing suggestive or gaudy, these fanatics call it chic. Truly, tastes vary, and students have the freedom to wear what they want, even with less care to nosy eyes or childish gestures. This however does not mean that ‘anything goes’ when it comes to how one dresses.
Some elders confirm that what you wear is really who you are and how you feel about yourself. They say clothing sends out a message, a serious statement about you. This simply means clothes can whisper neatness, stability or high moral standards. But in this era of fashion psychosis, some kind of clothing shouts rebellion and discontent. Some people are actually identified by their kind of clothes.
Spending time gazing into the colourful dress styles of UNZA students can prove to you that some students use ripped clothes, punk styles and expensive designer clothes as some kind of a trade mark. Others use their attire to attract the opposite sex or simply make themselves look much older than they could really be.
As the fashion designer and writer, John Molloy puts it; the way we dress has a remarkable impact on the people around us and greatly affects the way they treat us. Probably it is on this basis that parents often clash with their children over what they wear. But who takes that parental role when it comes to students, nature takes care of things. Parents struggle to guide children on what they wear so that they send right messages that project them as balanced and responsible parents.
Some students merely wear what their friends want them to wear to enable them look charming and germinate several ideas in the minds of their opposite sex. They reasonably clench the hearts of the other sex with a bittersweet mixture of pleasure and pain. Imbuing them sets a phenomenal sense of challenge. They are the bestiality of fashion.
Some youths however argue that they are tidy and methodic in the way they approach life. Many youths argue that what they wear is a statement of their independence and individuality. But some disciplinarians counsel that as a youth, your personality is still in a state of flux- still developing, still changing. So while you want to make a statement about yourself, you might not be too sure what that statement would be saying or how even to say it. This has led many youths to adorn themselves in bizarre and outrageous attire instead of establishing their ‘individuality.’ They are merely displaying their immaturity, even embarrassing their parents.
The emphasis on compliance has become so strong among the in-groups of youths to the extent that some of them have become prisoners of group norms. Over dependence on peers for advice on how to dress, how to talk, what to do, and even what to think and believe among the UNZA students is ruling the institution. What they fail to do is to gauge the level of qualification of their friends who give them that advice. Normally they suffer from the same emotional growing pains catching the trend.