Hello and welcome back! I’ve spent yet another week searching campus for your best fits, and today I bring you an exciting new installment cutting into the campus fashion scene.

Theo Lambecleaver is a first year marine biology major from Windham, New Hampshire. He chatted with me about his fashion sense and how it relates to music subculture, drawing inspiration from a family history of counter culture couture.

“Ive been into goth stuff for years and years” Theo told me, but after years of restrictive high school dress codes Theo said “When I came here I was like: ‘Ya know what? Sometimes I will just put effort into making a cool outfit.’”

For this interview Theo dressed in all black, layered belts, and long chain necklaces to compliment his thrifted gothic ruffle button down. “I like how it has this cape effect,” he told me, showing off the unique shirt design.

I asked Theo about how he got into goth fashion, where he began to explain the connection between music and fashion for him. “I think the starting point of it… would definitely be… my dad. He’s Irish, he grew up in England though, so he was… kind of a big part of the post punk and developing rock scene. So he influenced a lot of my early music tastes, and then from there I kind of expanded into more like traditional like goth music and post punk… and also a lot of other metal sub genres.”

“Then I just kind of adopted the fashion, or wanted to for a while,” he said, “and I only just recently started like actually wearing the s*** I actually wanted to wear.”

Theo elaborated on his relation to music subgenre, and fashion culture by extension, saying:

“My dad was one of the skinhead punks, like the working class English kids with the shaved heads… he was listening to ska and reggae and stuff like that, and that scene was a big part of the English working class solidarity and like unions sort of building, before it unfortunately got overculled by the right wing.

“It’s really cool to just kinda see that evolve,” he said, elaborating on how the development of English alternative subcultures guided his fashion choices.

Theo also talked a lot about balancing fashion sub culture with the busy life of a college student. He described how he uses accessories— like rings, chains, and boots—to dress up more casual outfits for class, as well as working with the limited space in the dorms on campus. “It just depends on how I’m feeling that day, or how the world around me feels,” he said, “I’m very flexible… I just kinda go off vibes.”