published on 09/21/06

“Vassar Girls” on runway

Mally Anderson Arts Editor

Fashion label Tuleh’s Fall 2006 collection featured slim, below-the-knee pencil skirts, prim coats and suits, and muted wools. The pieces’ headline? “Vassar Girls.” In the July/August 2006 issue of Departures magazine, an article entitled “Vassar Femmes,” (written by an anonymous Vassar alumna) explored the idea of the archetypal Vassar girl and whether she ever really existed.

When one thinks of the modern Vassar student, white gloves, lipstick, and pumps don’t usually come to mind. According to the “Vassar Femmes” author, those things didn’t come to mind in the ’60s either—she specifically recalls a preppier style, with Vassar girls in Shetland sweaters and penny loafers. This preppy style was not a fleeting fad of the ’60s, as then-Vassar students David and Cary Dufresne ’81 were photographed for Newsweek’s article heralding the publication of The Official Preppy Handbook in December 1980.

Certainly fashion’s evolution through the 20th century was vast and varied on campuses across America. Furthermore, the proper, ritzy aesthetic of Vassar in the ’40s was not unlike any of the other Seven Sisters colleges. So, why has that prim image stayed with us in the 21st century, especially when it is so incongruous with Vassar today?

According to the Departures article, the Vassar Girl is an icon. Contributors to this iconic image include Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot, Groucho Marx in A Day at the Races, and the 1963 novel The Group, which is set at Vassar in the ’30s and features characters who epitomize the image. However, it is obvious that whatever truth there may have been to the Vassar Girl, it had dissolved by the author’s time here as it had everywhere else. Women started wearing pants, and then the ’60s happened, carrying rebellion and revolution with it in spades. The College became co-ed in 1969 and the divide narrowed. The school colors changed, and the Vassar Girl became a legend of the past. According to a sidebar piece in Departures written by Vassar alumna Rose Reis ’02 the Vassar girl icon hasn’t returned.

“Vassar Femmes” is more of a nostalgic exploration of the idea of the Vassar Girl than a true comment on what she means to fashion and to the College, but the author raises an interesting point. Her last line resonates: “After [the College became co-ed], I figure campus was just wall-to-wall unisex jeans, with only Tuleh’s bows and rosettes to remind us of what never was.” Perhaps the fact that she has become a distant memory is just as important to the identity of the College as the Vassar Girl herself. While suits and heels represent the former finishing school/husband-hunter bent of education of another time, the variety of fashion here now and the students who wear it attest to the virtues of diversity, creativity, and expression that Vassar is cultivating in 2006. Someone can’t get kicked out of tea in the Rose Parlor because she (or he) isn’t wearing gloves and pearls, and it’s going to stay that way.