Ella: So, over spring break, I went to the eye doctor for the first time in, like, five years and got a new prescription. I went to Warby Parker to get new glasses – like over 2.26 million Americans as of 2022 – and ordered some new frames. I got the Winston frames in Black Oak Tortoise, for anyone wondering. I ordered the glasses, and on the first day I got them I was crossing the sheridan road and – Yumi, do you want to take it from here?
Yumi: I gotchu Ella. So, it’s like midnight, I had just gotten out of a cappella, and I’m on my nightly stroll back home. I see Ella about to cross Sheridan, and I get all excited ‘cuz I haven’t seen her since before spring break. So I go, “Ella! Ella!” And we start having a conversation, and the whole time, I’m just staring at her. Something about her wasn’t quite right. And then it hit me– we were wearing the same glasses.
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Y: It was a weirdly dissociative moment. I started imagining our glasses floating in the air and having a conversation. Like, if we were our glasses, and our glasses were the same disembodied glasses, and the glasses were facing each other and just talking to one another like two regular people having any regular old conversation. It was awesome.
E: We were so excited about it! We took a selfie to commemorate the moment and everything. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that not everyone would have that reaction.
Y: So, we set out on a mission to find out more about the experiences that the students at Northwestern have had matching with someone else, and what their reactions were when they realized.
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Y: When I think of wearing matching outfits, I think of elementary school. I’m convinced that there’s some universal force that instills the idea of “skirt days” into little girls’ minds. When I was younger, like elementary school young, I refused to wear a skirt to school unless I got 3 to 5 of my best girl friends to join me in the skirt wearing endeavor. And, the next day, without fail, we would roll up to school, all of us in skirts. It was honestly a really sweet testament to female friendship, looking back. And, as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who made friends this way. Here’s SESP junior Anya Bardach.
ANYA BARDACH: My middle school best friend who’s still my best friend today. She and I would always accidentally wear the same thing to school. It was never planned and it was like, I mean, like, we couldn’t have tried, like, it was like the easiest outfit to match. Like, jeans and the same sweatshirt, but it happened all the time. And so, I have pictures from, like, seventh grade of the two of us in the same outfit, and that’s definitely, like, part of how we bonded, and, like, became close. It was like, oh my God, you’re me and I’m you! Like, people would mix us up even though we, like, physically don’t look anything alike.
TALLUD: Do you still talk to your friend from middle school? What’s her name?
BARDACH: Her name’s Sydney. She’s my best friend. We’ve been best friends since the seventh grade. Like that was our impetus. I would say we do not match at all now. Like, I think our wardrobes are now wildly different.
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ELLA BARNES: What’s your name?
EMILY THOMPSON: Emily Thompson.
BARNES: What’s your year?
THOMPSON: I’m a sophomore.
BARNES: Have you ever had an experience where you’ve walked into a room and someone’s wearing the same thing as you?
THOMPSON: Yes, Talia Hartman-Sigall was wearing the same tank top as me when I walked into her house and then I walked into her room a couple of hours later and she had changed.
BARNES: So like what was your reaction to seeing the tank? Were you excited that you were wearing the same thing?
THOMPSON: I felt proud, to be honest, and then when she changed I felt disappointed because it felt like she didn’t want to be seen in a similar light to me.
BARNES: Oh, the drama!
E: Of course, I had to get Talia’s side of the experience. The comms junior refuted Emily’s claims by taking off her sweatshirt showing that she was still, in fact, wearing the same tank top as Emily! Talia had this to say about wearing the same thing as someone else:
TALIA HARTMAN-SIGALL: I think it’s fun. I like when I walk into the room and I’m wearing the same pants as someone else. Oh, that happened to us this weekend!
BARNES: Wait, yeah! Ha!
Y: Remember Anya? She was a Wildcat Welcome PA, a profession known to be just a little bit culty. They’re known for donning those ever-peppy demeanors and cheesy matching neon t-shirts. But for Anya, matching with other PAs is one of the best parts.
BARDACH: I am such a sucker for like an – [stutters] – what, informal uniform? Like a, like, club sweater. Like, a, like, the Wildcat Welcome shirt. The backpacks. Like, some common identifier. It definitely creates community in a way in that, like, even if there’s PAs I don’t know, but I see them in the same shirt as me, I know they’re a PA now, like, and we have that sort of like, that’s somebody I can wave to, having never met them before if we’re both in our shirts. Like, I know they’ll wave back. I guess I’m thinking of– of clothes in general as like a, like, like, a calling card, almost like a like, hey, like this is part of me and if you share that part, that’s always exciting to see around.
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E: Now, wearing the same thing as someone in everyday life is one thing. But what about at formal events? At my high school, all the girls in my grade had a facebook group where they would post their dresses once they got them to make sure nobody got the same dress. And, a lot of the dress shops in my area took down the names and high schools of those buying prom dresses to ensure originality. However, sophomore Neuroscience major Jasmine Ametovski did not have those precautions.
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AMETOVSKI: So, I went to prom, I didn’t really get my dress from anywhere unique, but I was feeling really good about myself. Then I walk in and I see a girl with the same dress as me. I refuse to make eye contact with her. I’m like, absolutely not, but she’s actually kind of my friend. So I whispered to my best friend. I was like, “She has the same dress as me” and she’s like, “Well, you look better.” And I also, I was like, she’s not doing it like me. She didn’t accessorize like me and maybe that’s a little bit narcissistic, but that’s how I felt. So I avoided her but at one point we were face to face and she’s like, “Oh my God, we have the same dress” and I was like, “yeah…”, just, totally not having it.
E: Comms junior Helena Schatzki had a similar experience, only, she was at an eighth grade dance called cotillion.
BARNES: What is cotillion for those who don’t know?
SCHATZKI: Well, cotillion usually you do like manners classes beforehand and then there’s a cotillion dance and it’s for eighth graders to boys and girls to mix together and it’s done a lot in the south and I’m from Kentucky. So a lot of people participate in cotillion. And I got there and I looked across the room and a girl was wearing the exact same dress as me, a black halter dress that flared a little at the bottom.
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And the whole night we were just eyeing each other,, because it’s a night you’re supposed to stand out and we were the same.
Y: Gavin Yi, a sophomore in School of Comms, surprise surprise, also made one of his best friends in high school through wearing matching outfits. His name was Gus, and they met in mime class. No, they weren’t both wearing a black and white striped shirt with a beret– I already asked. It was something simple, a beige-colored shirt tucked into some black jeans, that did the trick.
GAVIN YI: It was crazy, I remember for the first time it happened, we were like, “Uhhh.” And then it happened again, like, coincidentally. And– and then, we would like, every, like, year we, like, made it one day that we would wear the same outfit.
TALLUD: So you made, like, a holiday out of it.
YI: And yeah, we did make a holiday out of it.
Y: Gavin and Gus went on to become close friends, thanks to their shared love of fashion. Gavin is gay, and as far as he knows, Gus is straight. But Gavin says that nowadays, in college, finding straight male friends that have a genuine interest in fashion has been hard for him.
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YI: I feel like if I were to wear the same thing as one of them, which I probably have, like, and I had been like, “Look, we’re wearing the same thing!” And they’ll be like, “Oh, cool, yeah.”
TALLUD: Yeah.
YI: That’s it. And then it wouldn’t, like, spark a connection or anything, like, or a deeper conversation. But with some, I feel like, more– not effeminate but more in touch with their manlihood or, like, their appearance, then they are more open to having those conversations.
TALLUD: Do you think that, like, clothes can tell you a lot about a person just by seeing them?
YI: I would– 100% I would say that. Especially like, as a, like, a gay person too, like I feel like that is something that is so interesting and relevant to, like, the culture, because clothes are so representative of who you are and your aesthetic and who you portray yourself as in the world. And it’s interesting because it’s also like, it, it, with social media, it’s turned into an interesting game where straight guys have started to care more about their appearance and more about what they wear. And in, like, gay culture, guys, like gay guys are starting to like, not care about what they wear and just wearing whatever. Or like, dressing more like masculine, quote unquote. And straight men are dressing more effeminate. And so it’s interesting because it’s like something that would once signify that you were like, gay or like, part of like, a certain community is now being, like, flipped on its back.
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E: There’s no set way to react to wearing the same thing as someone. You can be excited, like Yumi and I were, or seriously annoyed like Jasmine was.
Y: It can make you reflect on your place in the world, like Gavin or Anya.
E: Either way, we can’t go out like this.
Y & E: One of us is gonna have to change.
E: For WNUR news, I’m Ella Barnes.
Y: And I’m Yumi Tallud.
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