“Being able to put a little extra into how I dress, and being able to dress up a little bit, is kind of a matter of pride for me, of saying I’ve reached a certain point in my life where I can do this,” said Lisak.
So for me that’s always something in the back of my mind, of how I want to present myself.” Photo by Ian Hollowayĭressing well is a privilege. But the way in which he has chosen to dress well is dictated by an awareness of what it means socially to dress in classic men’s clothes: “Growing up I came from a pretty low income background, and so for me I always saw wearing nice clothing very much as a status symbol, and I always wanted to be able to present myself as nicely as possible. But again, the consistency of a dapper dude appears here due to what he described as even-keeling emotions: “ is consistent only due to the fact that I often feel the same way… I’m not a very extreme person… The clothes reflect the fact that I’m comfortable.” This generally comfortable emotional state is reflected in a consistently dapper wardrobe.ĭressing consistently has an emotional imperative for Lisak: “Dressing like that makes me feel better, it makes me feel presentable, it makes me feel kind of like I have my life together.” He dresses well for himself. Lainé described his style as more reflective of his emotions than Barbano.
#Dapper dudes full
These expectations seem to be somewhat dictated by, and certainly are made so consistent by, his perfectionism: “I’m a perfectionist, so if I don’t dress myself the way that I think is the best that I could be, I’ll be self conscious about it the whole day, even though no one else notices – I haven’t achieved full potential for the day.” He takes pride in achieving something a little more controlled, and something a little more interesting, than sweatpants. It’s a standard that I have to maintain.” He has set expectations for himself. As Barbano ’18 explained, “Regardless of where I am or how I feel, I dress the same. And so I set out to find out what makes a dapper dude by talking to a few notables of our dapper dude contingent: Jameson Lisak ’15, Louis Lainé ’16 and Luke Barbano ’18.ĭapper dudes are consistent. I was curious about that effort, which seemed to set Swat’s dapper dudes apart from many other Swat dudes.
To be dapper isn’t an automatic, environment-ascribed choice here it takes concerted, conscious effort.
#Dapper dudes professional
To be dapper is to take traditional to the verge of eccentric, especially in the context of Swarthmore, where traditional men’s professional wear is a rare student dress choice. Maybe something of my personal image of dapper is captured here - it’s something hidden beneath a veneer of well-prepared traditional men’s style. And “neat and trim” – those words have a sort of old-fashioned strangeness to them, after all.
It reminds me of an article I read a few months ago that talks about the prevalence of pre-professional, interview-ready neatness amongst students on Ivy League campuses.īut you can read a little more there besides the neat and trim - “dapper” encompasses an entire mode of comportment. And so I gaze around campus with even more admiration than ever before for our dapper dudes.ĭapper: (typically of a man) neat and trim in dress, appearance, or bearing (OED). And when the cold hits, one of the first things I want to abandon when relinquishing my fluffy comforter every morning is any clothing that doesn’t approximate that comforter as closely as possible. I was sitting around a Sharples dinner table avoiding the 5:00pm darkness today, seeing my friends scarfing down carbs in sweatshirts.
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