My wife and I motored down to southside Virginia last weekend for a poignant event in the family chronicles: our last Parents’ Weekend at Hampden-Sydney College, where our son is in his final year. The process of abandoning the nest can be prolonged in 21st-century America, I concede, but this was surely a significant step along the way.
If you think (or more likely, if you fear) that this is an introduction to a meditation on parenthood, or the unique relationship between son and father, or the way the years of childhood seem to have melted swiftly away, you can relax. My wife and I were sentimental on the subject for about three minutes–somewhere between Orange and Gordonsville, Virginia, on old Route 15–before settling into our customary Parents’ Weekend subject of discussion: clothes.
I should begin by explaining that Hampden-Sydney is a very old (1776), very rigorous, very southern institution, steeped in tradition; and one of those traditions, happily revived in recent decades, is a certain mode of dress. I should also explain that Hampden-Sydney is one of two surviving all-male colleges in America, which leads to an interesting, not to say counterintuitive, observation: Instead of looking like slobs on occasions such as Parents’ Weekend, the students tend to dress with a certain formality.
Not sober formality, I hasten to add, but a distinctive brand of preppy flair characteristic of the place. For example, in the stadium during football games, you can easily identify the H-SC men by their blue blazers, khaki trousers, wrinkled white shirts, bow ties, and horn-rimmed sunglasses. Some of the more adventurous types have a weakness for accessorizing with what I think of as golf wear–lime-green trousers, Bermuda shorts, pink polo shirts–but the prevailing style has a flavor of the afternoon lime-juice-and-gin at the country club, or better yet, collegiate America, ca. 1958.
No doubt, this impression is distressing to the Hampden-Sydney administration, but I revel in it–for above all, it signifies hope. I began my undergraduate career in the late 1960s when, as an inveterate coat-and-tie man, I found myself confronted by a campus culture of jeans, torn military blouses, greasy shoulder-length hair, and aviator glasses. I never succumbed to it myself; but I did compromise, to a certain extent, on the assumption that this ostentatiously slovenly uniform was the wave of the future.
Well, I was wrong. In the fullness of time male American undergraduates, for the most part, recovered their senses. And at Hampden-Sydney, on Parents’ Weekend, you can discern the clash of generations. While the dads wander the antebellum, tree-lined campus in shorts, open collars, and Bass Weejuns, their offspring sport penny loafers, grosgrain watchbands, and Southern Proper-brand ties. It’s an interesting spectacle.
However, the sartorial debate that my wife and I have been carrying on these past four years may never be settled. She believes that this difference in dress between fathers and sons is a version of the generation gap: How instructively ironic, in her view, that the younger set is more formal than the Baby Boomers. My position, for what it’s worth, is that the oldsters look upon Parents’ Weekend as an informal event while the students are prompted to dress up for the occasion. (Accordingly, I position myself somewhere in the middle by going Saturday Casual: blazer, khaki chinos, blue buttoned-down shirt, no tie.)
Whatever the truth may be, I should point out that our son, in this sense, is indistinguishable from his fellows. But whether this is due to the pressure of conformity or (as I like to think) his father’s wisdom, I cannot say. When he was born I resolved–as I suspect most fathers do–to impart certain fundamental verities. In my case, this did not involve an absorption in honor, or devotion to courage, or reverence for character (I left all that to his alluring mother) but relatively trivial things: basic equestrian skills, an appreciation for surreal humor, confirmation in the Episcopal church, the assurance that comes with knowing how to shift gears, tie a bow tie, etc.
I am pleased to report that my lead has largely been followed. On the matter of clothes, however, I sometimes wonder if I succeeded too well. For a while my son, in his formative years, always consulted me on questions of dress–peaked or shawl lapels for tuxedos, paisley ties and striped shirts, seersucker after Labor Day–he is now well on his way to surpassing me. His wardrobe is infinitely more varied, and elegant, than mine was at his age, and certainly more voluminous.
Which, when you consider the alternatives, is not the worst habit to have picked up in college.
PHILIP TERZIAN
