Every week, The Pioneer searches out Whitties who bring an extra splash of fashion consciousness and sartorial daring to campus. This week’s Style Spotlight: sophomore psychology major Kalen Bergado.
Style Soundbites
“[The keychain] is by this guy called Quarter, and he makes custom wallets, belts, keyrings. They come in different types of leather, so you can get ones that have been oiled, kind of more raw leather that hasn’t been exposed to the sun at all, so it’s just tanned . . . so when I got this, it was white, almost. I’m kind of into the evolution of things, so I really like how its age has picked up. Blue indigo dye from denim: I’m really into raw selvedge denim, which is denim that hasn’t been sanforized or washed before, so it’s super super stiff, and it has no pre-fades, it’s just really dark. You wear it and it just molds to the way you wear it. At the end, there’s patches and rips, but it has a lot of character, and it has a lot of stories of where you’ve been and what you’ve done: it’s like your own personal pair of jeans; it’s not something you can buy at a store.”
“The shirt was actually just a regular long-sleeved Oxford before I got it. I saw a picture on the Internet of one that kind of looked like a three-quarter length with a piece of material sewn at the end, of a different pattern than the Oxford. I asked my mom if she could make one for me; she’s super into sewing and she made it. My jacket: my dad is a park ranger for the State of California: he has all of his old uniform stuff in the basement and I was just in the basement one day and saw it.”
“I love expensive clothes. If I had thousands of dollars: I’m gonna be honest, I’d probably blow it on clothes. There are so many pieces I want that I just can’t afford. Like, designer pieces that aren’t meant to be affordable; they’re meant to be limited. But I also like vintage thrift stuff. You can find me searching online, like looking at the designer collections for spring-summer ’12, but also in a thrift store buying cheap-ass T-shirts.”
“Before yesterday, I had leopard-spot hair: just over Thanksgiving break, on a whim, I decided to bleach my hair. Originally, I was going to do it pink with black leopard spots, and then I decided, probably wouldn’t work with that many things I could wear, so I decided to do blonde. Bleached my hair blonde and then dyed leopard spots in. I’ve had strangers come up to me and tell me how much they like my hair: someone in my fraternity told me he thought I was the coolest person on the planet for putting leopard spots in my hair. It’s really nice to hear that people appreciate doing something kind of out there, they don’t just take it as weird.”
“Esquire Magazine has been a really huge influence on the person I am today, as far as my fashion, as far as my attitude about how I wear my clothes. Super Future is this fashion forum on the internet: there are some really fashionable, smart people. Other influences: Japan has been a huge influence on my style and probably the reason I’m trying to go there for study abroad next year. They’ve been doing things in fashion that are just now on models and on runways.”
