Skater Look

Title: “The Skater Look”

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Abe Vazquez is a Dartmouth ’20 from Los Angeles, California, planning to major in neuroscience with a minor in Spanish. Abe attended a public school throughout his high school experience in southern California, and spent a great deal of time skateboarding with friends while growing up. Abe is a child of Mexican immigrants who he says were not entirely aware of skate culture (Abe says that if they were, they might have had a different opinion), and thus while not actively encouraging his practice of skateboarding they did not admonish it either, and he continued to skate in tacit agreement with his parents.

Contextual Data:

I found Abe as he was studying on the first floor of Baker Library in a cubicle with his skateboard tucked beneath the desk. The outfit was meant to be casual and comfortable for a short period of studying before a class meeting, the skateboard his means of transportation. Abe is one of perhaps two individuals in the space dressed distinctly in the skater aesthetic, clearly not a major style choice in this particular location in the library.
Dartmouth tends to draw a lot of students from California, which is the birth place of the modern skater style. Today, skateboarding and the associated look have spread across the country, but skate culture still remains more ubiquitous in California than the rest of the United States. In this way, Abe’s look is emblematic of that of many of the students from California as Dartmouth, as well as students from other places who are involved in skate culture and dress according to the influence of that aesthetic. There is a lot of overlap between the skater groups and outdoorsy groups, which broadens the scope of the skater look to an even broader population.

Item:

Abe is wearing a plaid flannel shirt, jeans rolled up at the ankles, high striped socks and weathered vans with his skateboard in hand.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Informant’s Comments:

Abe says that the Los Angeles skate culture heavily influenced his introduction to skateboarding and the associated style due to the high population of skateboarders, abundance of skate parks, and normalcy of skating across the city. He also says his brother, also surely influenced by this environment, is one of the main reasons he got into skateboarding.

Collector’s Comments:

Abe’s outfit is the perfect example of the skater aesthetic, the flannel and rolled up jeans both staples of the look. It’s an outfit that has become stylish through its functionality in the physical act of skateboarding which doubles as casual wear that would suit myriad other situations as well, like studying or socializing.

Collector’s Name: Eugene Linden

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive