Social media has blurred traditional US and UK campus distinctions, encouraging homogenized dressing and cross-border trends like room-tours and library fit checks. Algorithms promote similar aesthetics across campuses, making the image of campus life more potent than lived experience. Fashion and accessory brands are capitalising by launching student-targeted ranges: Skims produced a Campus Collection modelled by students, Asos curates a Student Edit of over 2,000 items, and PrettyLittleThing staged a library-shot Back to Class campaign with preppy styling. Brands collaborate with students and adapt imagery to campus settings to monetise the aspirational, curated version of university life.
Previously, it was easy to differentiate between UK and US campus culture. US students had frat parties, drank from plastic red cups and slept in shared dorm rooms. Meanwhile, UK freshers had house parties, drank cans on the bus and congregated in communal kitchens. But thanks to social media the lines are becoming more blurred. Algorithms have influenced everyone to dress the same and now this is affecting campus culture.
Now, as the illusion of campus life becomes more powerful than the reality of it, brands are attempting to monetise it. This month Kim Kardashian's all-powerful shapewear label Skims pivoted from selling Hannibal Lecter-esque face-sculpting wraps to PJs for students to bed rot in. Its first dedicated Campus Collection features dorm-approved and lecture-ready pieces such as jersey capri pants, cropped hoodies and cotton poplin micro shorts modelled by a group of real students (dubbed the Skims Class of 2025).
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