As it turns out, my fashion prestige is not limited to the color of my T-shirt. In fact, I've been setting trends for about three years. I know this because the leaders of the fashion world have followed in my footsteps a few years later.

The first trend I set upon arriving at college was the formal/informal contrast look. I wore standard dress pants, dress shirt, dress shoes and tie, and then layered it with a sweatshirt (matching the pants' color). That way, the shirt and tie make the outfit undoubtedly dressy, but the sweatshirt takes the edge off, and makes it look a little more comfortable. Also, the combination of tan sweatshirt/tan pants (or navy sweatshirt/navy pants) looks really good when contrasted with a shirt and tie of a different color.

Another trend I set, or at least anticipated, was the bright colors of my towels and washcloths. The summer before college, I mixed-and-matched a set of hot pink, turquoise, and lime green. For years, everybody was impressed by the bright colors, especially the pink, but then this fall K-mart,  Bed & Bath, and Target all featured similar lineups of colors, marketed especially for dorm rooms.

Of course, an alternative explanation is that the major fashion houses have been following me with a video camera. I saw a documentary once about how they don't actually invent trends. They just go undercover and see what the punk outcasts are wearing, because they know that their clothes will become popular in a year or two. So maybe, rather than calling myself a "fashion impresario," I should simply go by "visionary punk."