Panther sightings: students come to class in style

Ashley Garner/Columnist

Miami is a city known to the world for its breathtaking beaches, celebrity hub hot spot, and its unique fashion sense.

It hosts Mercedes Benz fashion week every year and the fashion industry is growing at an astonishing rate, but it’s no surprise that when you have designers coming to the city to shoot their season’s campaigns and international art events like Art Basel coming into town.

Local artists, DJs, designers, and style icons have created a fashion niche for Miami that encompasses vibrant colors, rising hemlines, punk rock jewelry, and a rebellious attitude. At Florida International University you can find these style-savvy locals at every corner. However, though there is no fashion major at FIU, it doesn’t hold anyone back from showing their true colors in neon shades of green and pink or dip-dyed hair in teals and corals.

Biology majors wear high-low skirts in technicolor patterns and international relations students rock 5-inch heels and Gucci messenger bags.

To say the least, the variety of personal style seen on the FIU campus is affluent, daring, and inspiring.

As college students, it is our top priority to open our minds and take risks in these four years of youthful freedom through the classes we take, clubs we join, or people we interact with.

It is also a time for us to test our creativity, take risks, and to find ourselves.

Fashion has always been an outlet for people to visually express themselves. It is the first impression you make before you say “Hello.”

Still, it is also more than just materialism, it is about how we are inspired by our surroundings and how we interpret that individually. Best said by Coco Chanel, “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

That is why it is refreshing to see that the University’s student body is taking full advantage of our city’s influence and making it their own by strutting the halls of GC in head-turning ensembles.

There are backpacks in neon tie dye swirls, shoes covered with spikes, funky sunglasses, and ring-filled hands.

Each of these students realize that this is the time in life for experimentation. We can call it the “Transition Period.” One day you’ll see a girl all in black wearing combat boots, and the next day you’ll see the same girl in a white sundress wearing platform heels.

The massive cultural influence from all around the world makes the University special. Student’s backgrounds vary from South American, Deutschland, Japan and South Africa.

Some muslim students are seen wearing hijab’s in extravagant prints and patterns or Anime fans in the library with cartoon character hats and bags to match.

There is no limit to each student’s personal style and clearly their non-art majors aren’t affecting their fashion creativity one bit.

-Haute Topic is a fashion column. Look for it this fall.