By Alya Quratulain Abd Moen
Every person is fashion-conscious. It is rather a craze all over the world. Malaysians, especially students, have become addicted to be in trend as social media has played its role to spread this phenomenon. They do it in a competitive spirit to look smart, up-to-date and attractive. Now we live in consumerism advanced era in which whether following fashion trends or not has become a debatable issue, especially among the young generation.
Some people believe that pursuing this trend is a good way of improving people’s life styles, while many others argue that people should dress something more comfortable. A fashion is a popular style or practice, especially in clothing, shoes, girls’ accessories, makeup and lots more. A fashion is a distinctive and often a habitual trend in the style in which a person dresses.
Students nowadays could easily be up-to-date in fashion although they are in the university compound as there are several events being held around the campus. Most of what they want are easily obtainable and affordable to the students. Moreover, the tendency for students to buy is really high as the duration of events held take some time to finish.
These days, students devote more time to fashions than studies. Educational institutions, particularly colleges, present the picture of film studios. As soon as a boy or a girl joins a college or university, there occurs a marvellous change in him or her. Students become more passionate in order to search for their own identity and to look more confident in public. Besides that, each of the students now owns a smartphone that has a lot of functions, hence it becomes so easy to do online shopping.
Meanwhile, students easily copied and imitated the celebrities and how they look like. From top to toe, everything that she or he wears will be focused and they will try to be one of them in order to look attractive to others. Women especially tend to compete against each other to look more elegant and vogue. With the technologies and internet nowadays, they could simply get into Instagram or Facebook to search for their goods.
Instagram is easier to use as the buyers could just use the hashtags to search for things they want. Instagram also influences people through their promotion as some companies use celebrities to promote their products. The people who are influenced by the promotion through celebrities would add or follow the real seller and will buy the products.
It is easier to influence people especially the students because they have lots of time to look at by scrolling the social media such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Ahmad Qaidi, a student, said that most of his female friends are good at fashion but they still wear according to shariah compliance. “The hijab that they wear still cover their upper parts and they wear hand socks to cover their wrists. It is a good trend of fashion among IIUM students compared to the situation outside.”
He also mentioned that the celebrities such as Yatt Hamzah and Diana Amir are good icons in Muslimah fashion. They play an important role to influence people, especially the younger generation, to follow the fashion yet still know the limit.
Generally, it is the student community that leads the fast-changing fashions. Once a thing or style gets in vogue, it is blindly followed by the students because they love the new thing much notwithstanding how much inconvenience it entails. They have forgotten that, as students, they should not clamour for ‘rights’ but try to acquire knowledge whole-heartedly and with single-minded devotion.
Their priority should focus on learning and not to flatter or flaunt themselves with false sense of self-respect. Moreover, there are so much of important and educational things to do such as buying textbooks, stationaries, laptops for assignments and others. It is a pity that students in this modern days are deliberately allowing themselves to be caught in the whirl-pool of fashions.
To make noise during functions, to pass remarks on others, to discuss politics and to support certain parties are, in a way, their fashionable pastimes. They forget everything else but always remember ‘misleading fashions.’ In class or while having lunch all the things that come out from their mind are about fashion or how to look good in front of others. Sometimes female students tend to judge physical appearance of other students and what they wear than anything else. This may be unethical.***
Photo of Cyntia Monica Fabella