The University of Sydney is not recognised for an illustrious sense of style. Instagram reels document the immaculately-layered fashion students at UTS, or the effortlessly chic design students at UNSW, rarely acknowledging the icy Eastern Avenue catwalks or Quadrangle poses.
But with the introduction of fashion sighting pages on Instagram in recent years, a subculture of style commentary at USyd has emerged.
One such page is USYD Fashion (@usydfashion), which was founded in 2019. They define themselves as scouters of “the best of USyd style”. To be scouted, interviewed and photographed by USYD Fashion has become an aspirational and hot commodity on campus.
What’s it all about?
It appears the USYD Fashion account has finessed a formula for every post: cool outfit, degree credentials and cryptic interview quote. Often the subjects are caught between classes or catching up with their friends on the Law Lawns — they strike a pose or stand in situ, making for the perfect ingredients for a viral Instagram post.
With irregular posting schedules, every post is hotly anticipated and scrutinised. Sometimes the account goes months without posting and other times posts weekly.
To be featured on or find out more about the account feels like threading a knotless string. What constitutes being “fashionable” enough for a spot on the page? Who is it that runs the account? When do they scope out campus? Do they only capture people they know? When will they capture me?
Meet your scouter!
I wanted to better understand how and why this page exists, so I sat down with one of the scouter’s and admins of the account, Hanna, to chat about all things fashion, trends and parasocial relationships.
For full transparency, I found out Hanna was a fashion scouter because she scouted me. I was leaving a soul-depleting Public Relations class in the Abercrombie Business School late last year when she whipped out her camera and asked myself and a friend if we would like to be photographed for the Instagram account. That was my entrance to the elusive world of USYD Fashion’s Instagram.
The Instagram account has one main admin, dubiously known as ‘The Founder’, and a small rotation of 2-3 scouters. There is no particular deadline or quota of photos to snap and interestingly, the scouters have to send their content to The Founder for approval who will eventually post the picture. Although unclear, this may be the reason for their unpredictable posting schedule.
Despite this seemingly bureaucratic process, Hanna describes her fashion scouting responsibilities as “unregimented” and prefers to “organically” capture her subjects.
For Hanna, her love of fashion was inspired by growing up on 2014 Tumblr, her cultural identity, and her fashion collector grandmother in Japan. When asked what her personal definition of fashion is, Hanna told Honi that she sees it as “curating something that feels authentically myself,” all while “pushing the boundaries of statement pieces.” She notes she also draws a lot of influence from fashion designers like Issey Miyake.
Even today, Hanna leans on Tumblr pages and Pinterest boards for inspiration. For the general student populus, Hanna’s headhunting has led to the observation of the “masc bottom/femme top” phenomenon. This looks like boxy or more textured bottom apparel contrasted with dainty and more feminine tops and layers.
Hanna found the state of fashion on campus this year inspiring, telling Honi that “last semester was hopeful! There was a great sense of style on campus with every second person worth photographing”.
When asked why, Hanna attributed this to how “outfits stand out when the wearer feels the most themselves,” and as a photographer for USyd fashion,“that’s what I want to see.”
Any ops?
USYD Fashion is not without their fair share of friends and foes. One such friend is USyd Fashion Revolution, a registered University of Sydney Union society that is also the Sydney arm of Fashion Revolution’s global movement. This group specialises in making “wardrobes more sustainable”, “experimenting with clothes” that isn’t “at the expense of people of the planet”.
When asked if USYD Fashion has any competition Hanna giggled and shook her head telling Honi that “we love USyd Fashion Revolution[…] but because we are so irregular and so aloof, there is no competition”.
By chance, Honi stumbled across an anonymous subject of the Instagram page and their reviews were mixed. Whilst they cited that their experience was “nice” and they “appreciated them following up before the actual post”, they also noted that when asked not to use a specific quote, it was unfortunately still published. Whilst this is not the dramatic exposé you would find on Deuxmoi, it seems to reveal the curatorial and fabricated nature of fashion-posting. Publishing in the scathing Instagram world is not for the faint of heart.
Campus In’s & Out’s
In
Much like advice found in every fashion editorial, Hanna wants you to understand fashion trends like the weather — seasonal and unpredictable. In this season keep an eye out for hiking shoe chic, boxy silhouettes for trousers and bottom wear and leaning into accessorization like scarfs, clips and belts. For Hanna items that are “in” for each category include:
- Shoes: Merrell, Salomons
- Bottoms: balloon pants
- Accessories: chunky headphones, slim scarfs
- Tops: texture, asymmetry and layers
Out
The “out” list was made with some hesitation. Consistent with Hanna’s views, “out” trends are particular to the person or community and can often be rooted in memes or groupthink, and can contribute to unsustainable practices of fast-fashion. For Hanna, these are the items fell into the “out” list:
- Shoes: Crocs
- Bottoms: two-tone panelled jeans
- Tops: tops with too many frills
- Accessories: visor
How do you get featured?
We should start with what the account looks for. According to Hanna, USyd Fashion brings “an account that celebrates those who love clothes, those who love experimenting with textiles and those who want to bring a splash of colour” to our campus culture
The philosophy seems to endorse leaning into the kind of clothes that makes you feel most like you. Simple enough, right? But of course, fashion scouting is inherently subjective and scary. Hanna herself finds it intimidating to “walk up to all these cool looking people” but jokingly said, “If there is a girl with short bob hair with a camera walk past her three times and that’ll be my sign that you are with it”.
Even so, there is no masterful hack or method to lock in your chance to be featured on the USYD Fashion account, they just simply have to find you.
