How Our Location Can Dictate Our Style

If there’s one thing which the internet seems to be currently obsessed with, it’s travel. With the emergence of travel influencers (and the aid of social media) people feel the need to shout and scream about their holidays online, making us at home start to feel our eyes turn greener with jealousy after each braggy post. Eventually, it gets to a point when you can’t stand the spectating anymore, so you book yourself a well-deserved holiday. For a moment, the excitement overcomes you and you forget that you have to endure the hell of packing. And amidst this packing mania, it dawns on you that you don’t have a clue what people wear in your chosen destination. What a predicament!

Why is it that places seem to come with a specific style; there always seems to be a dress code that we’re just supposed to know. And if we don’t adhere to these unspoken style sanctions, then we immediately expose ourselves as tourists – something which anyone attempting to fit into a new city wants to avoid like the plague.

The difference in style isn’t that noticeable as a tourist momentarily visiting, you only start to see the real contrast after you immerse yourself fully into the fashion culture.

Small town girl vs. big city

This effect became obvious when I moved from a small-town in The Lake District to the city of Edinburgh for uni. In small towns, popular styles tend to favour safety and comfort over adventure. It’s like we’re less exposed to the world when we’re in our little communities.

There are things which only go on trend within that very specific fashion environment, which makes it so that when you leave the place, but are yet to leave the fashion habits behind, you can feel a little stupid. Specifically, in the Lakes, we get the joys of small-town dressing, whilst also experiencing the unique collision with the world of the outdoors – meaning that we see lots of outfits with rogue hiking boots.

In contrast, after moving to a city, you feel a massive pressure to dress cooler and more unique; there’s an urge to develop your personal style over following the style of the collective. Moving from a small town to a city is an overwhelming experience for many, many reasons. One important one is that you can suddenly feel so inferior just by dressing according to the conventions of your town, because suddenly that doesn’t mean you fit in – it means the opposite. And it’s not that there’s a set dress code for all cities and all small towns; it might be true that cities are more fashion-forward than small towns in general, but it’s not true that all small towns have a surplus in outdoor clothing. Places of a similar type follow similar conventions, but they all have their own specific styles.

Edinburgh

Moving to Edinburgh is an interesting experience as it’s a city with a very specific feel to it. Being surrounded by the Gothic Architecture can easily make you feel immersed into a Shelley novel, which can consequently make you feel the urge to seep academia from every item of your clothes. This might be because it’s freezing most of the time, and it’s easier to give academia (over hot girl) when every inch of your body is wrapped in a thick wool coat. But, the weather definitely adds to the city’s overall atmosphere, making you feel fully immersed in the fictional feeling that this real city creates.

London

If I were to take my Edinburgh style to London, however, I’d still look stylish, but probably wouldn’t adhere to the style of people in my age range. As an outsider, London feels much cooler and more contemporary than Edinburgh. Where the style in Edinburgh feels classic, London’s style feels current. And this might be my opinion only because I (despite being a frequent visitor and having friends who live there), have never lived there myself. So, the fashion may feel cooler-than-I-am, and more fast-paced because I simply can’t catch up to it – it’s unattainable.

This is probably why I always panic when packing my suitcase for London and have an existential crisis about my style (and myself), every time (without fail). Compared to the utter lack of stress I feel when packing for coming home – literally all I worry about is whether I have enough comfy clothes to last me – it’s quite a difference.

Style-Switching

It seems like we all engage in code-switching in more ways than we thought. We know that we change the way we talk and the language we use to adhere to our contexts. But we also code-switch our fashion tastes to conform to our location. Not necessarily because of practical factors like the weather, even though these do play a role, but because of the style of the destination.

It's quite funny how we always try to fit in wherever we go. It’s cute if you think about it really, we just want to feel like we belong in a foreign city, and our fashion taste might just be the thing that helps us do this. What a sweet aspect of the human nature!