U of C "fashion": Not so unconventional after all

Trying, unsuccessfully, to help my friend track down a pair of flip-flops (and no, the man I intend to vote for for president doesn't count) this afternoon, we found ourselves in, like, a mall, on Michigan Avenue; more specifically, we found ourselves in the duchy of J. Crew. Why a duchy? Why not?

In any case, the latest look in that bastion of preppy paraphernalia is nothing other than the elbow-patch blazer, a look I'd never noticed before coming to Chicago, and one I've found fascinating since getting here. Like the housecest pseudomarriage (you U of Cers know what I'm talking about), the elbow-patch blazer is one of those things that just can't be explained to people from other institutions. But now, the E.P.B. has made it to the mainstream. A young man rolling his own cigarette in front of Wieboldt sheds a single tear.

If the elbow-patch blazer is the new frayed white lacrosse-team baseball hat, what gets to be the new elbow-patch blazer? My money's on the trench coat, in that I already have one, as does at least one other French lit major, and with French majors picking the U of C trends, those trends might for once lean more towards fashion than anti-fashion.

On a related note, a strange conversation at Jimmy's/Woodlawn Tap culminated in a group of people concluding that what Hyde Park really needs is a Chanel. Not a GAP, not an Old Navy, not a tepid step towards gentrification, but something all-out classy and blatantly unaffordable to both the Hyde Park community and the students/staff/faculty of the University. What wouldn't a store window filled with those interlocking "C's" do for 53rd Street...