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 anthropology major Janaki Phillips.

Style Soundbites

“I found this sweater in a vintage shop in Queen Anne, Seattle when I stayed there visiting my best friend last spring break. My belt, I found this spring break; I went back home [to Denver] for the first time in, like, eight months and went shopping with my mom and we found this belt for, like, $2 at a thrift store. It was a good find.”

“My bracelets, I’ve had for a while. I made the large one––it has arrows on it. This one I’ve had on since June 2009. It’s a wristband from a concert I went to in Finland. It was a rock festival, and I haven’t taken it off since. My rings––this one has Sanskrit on it; it’s a prayer to the Mother Goddess.”

“I have eight piercings, five of which I did myself. I got my first ear piercing at Claire’s – pretty standard––and then, when I was fifteen, my mom took me to get my nose pierced. I pierced my second ear piercing myself, and then, in high school, over a year or two, I started gauging them. While I was an exchange student in Finland, I pierced my own lip one night, for no other reason than, I was kind of bored. My host sister had a lot of piercings and there’s a huge piercing culture in Finland for some reason, and also I was messaging some friends from home, and one of my friends just got her septum pierced. I was like, ‘I want another facial piercing.’ And so I did it myself, sort of stupidly, before I realized that there is indeed a nerve in your lip, that if you hit, you’ll paralyze your own face. But I didn’t know about that, so I just went for it.”