Welcome back to Fashion on Fifth, a beloved Free Press series showcasing New School students’ unique and wide-ranging style. After seeing how this creative community translated their personal looks to Zoom, our reporters are taking to the streets of Greenwich Village once again. This semester we are bringing you more in depth profiles and thoughts from your peers about their style evolution throughout the pandemic and since being back in New York City.

Sammy Dreibelbis

Sammy Dreibelbis, a second-year fashion studies major at Parsons, described her style as a mix of artistic and gothic elements. 

Dreibelbis wore a denim skirt adorned with colorful graphic pins and a hand-made patch depicting a red jeep, rats and the words, “In Sammy Laws, We Trust” to class on Oct. 7. She wore black leopard tights under her skirt with platform mary-janes and an angel-printed mesh top. She stored her personal items in a fuzzy, chicken-shaped, crossbody bag.

Dreibelbis’s style is fantasy-driven, often incorporating rats and apocalyptic themes into her looks. “I come up with my own, made-up stories… and inspire myself from that,” she said.

Dreibelbis said her go-to statement pieces tend towards moody corsets and other lingerie pieces worn as tops. She usually pairs them with a more muted bottom, to emphasize the details and structure of the tops.  

Jewelry is a must for all of Dreibelbis’ outfits. She said it’s where her interests and personality shine through. She often layers colorful, beaded necklaces and bracelets and uses inanimate objects as earrings. She made sure to point out her cherished rat earrings. “Rats are my thing,” she said. “I have them everywhere. I’m inspired by them!” She pointed out two on her left ear. “I have a little rat earring my partner gave me. Then I have more earrings, a lot of my friends make or find [them] and just give them to me,” she said. “I even make some for them, it’s a trade off!” She also pointed out her glow-in-the-dark skeleton toy earring to welcome “spooky” season.  

Hannah Sobon

Hannah Sobon is a second-year acting and screenwriting major at Eugene Lang College. 

For her interview with The New School Free Press, Sobon wore black, bootcut jeans she thrifted, an embellished tank top she found at Buffalo Exchange and platform Jaden Dr. Martens. 

When asked to describe her style, she said, “[It’s] a last minute scramble in my closet. It’s an assembly of random pieces that come from different places.” 

Sobon does not follow a specific theme or aesthetic, she said. Rather she views everyday as a chance to experiment, “an opportunity to play a different archetype.” She equates styling her outfit to completing a puzzle. “It’s fun fitting the pieces together,” Sobon said.

She purchases the majority of her clothes from thrift stores across the city, and upcycles hand-me-downs from friends and family. “A lot of my friends will do a closet clean-out and let me go through [the clothes]. They’re almost never what I’m looking for, but a sewing machine goes a long way,” she said. 

“I’ve always liked dressing up even if I’m not going anywhere for the day,” Sobon said, adding that her style really hasn’t changed over the course of the pandemic. Now that classes are back in-person, Sobon’s go-to outfit for class is navy scrub pants, a black mesh bodysuit and platform Dr. Martens. Sobon said this outfit is her comfy fallback option because it’s easy but always looks cute and put-together.

Sobon told The Free Press that she loves to explore new trends, and is always inspired by the wide variety of outfits she sees her peers wearing on campus. “I appreciate how everyone is not afraid to express themselves with their style,” she said. “It definitely has helped me overcome the anxiety of someone thinking I’m trying too hard for school.” 

Sobon’s take on personal style centers around comfort, confidence and individuality. The most important thing about fashion for Sobon is that “…everyone owns the right to wear whatever they feel most confident in for the day,” she said. She treats personal style as something that does more than just reflects someone’s identity over time. For Sobon, her outfits reflect her mood and serve as a daily playground – they don’t necessarily have to be reflective of some curated, personal brand. “There seems to be a lot of judgement around people either dressing down or putting in too much effort,” Soban said. “I could walk into class one day looking like I’m trying to get into a NYFW event and the next day show up in sweats. Either way, it’s nobody’s place to judge!”

Montana Murray

Montana Murray talked about her love for a sporty aesthetic and challenged everyone to be free in what they wear.

Originally from Los Angeles and currently a second-year Strategic Design and Management student at Parsons, Murray described her style as “usually sporty, and I’m in yoga pants and a crop top all the time.” Today, however, she decided to “dress up and look pretty nice, like I do on a night out.” Murray wore a chocolate-brown, one-shoulder top from Aritzia under a fitted Off-white blazer. She paired brown Alice and Olivia cargo pants with a Chanel belt and black boots from Zadig & Voltaire.

Murray’s fashion is greatly influenced by the experience of living in New York City and the variety it brings. “New York has these kicks to it where you want to stay moving 24/7, and I feel like that energy is back,” she said. Murray said she always wants to “dress for whatever the day has to come, whether that is walking three to four – or going to get a bite to eat at a bodega.” 

“People dress up to go to class sometimes,” Murray said. She explained that she does feel some pressure when picking out clothes for the day but that the pressure never takes precedence over her comfort.  “[It] has to fit my lifestyle,” said Murray, which inspires her love for sporty clothes that are also fashionable. Murray said that the looks she loves are often challenging to achieve because of how expensive well-designed sportswear and sports-inspired fashion pieces can be. “I’m consistently on the fence between dressing like a hobo and a sporty fashion queen, I’m not sure,” said Murray.

Her go-to outfit for class is some combination of sporty shorts from Lululemon and a vintage T-shirt. As fall emerges and temperatures drop, Murray said she would be trading in the shorts for leggings, likely from Lululemon.  While Murray does have a fondness for Lululemon, she said she is trying to support smaller “sporty” brands but that it’s not easy to find ones that fit her figure. “I have to succumb to these bigger brands, which sucks,” Murray said. 

Murray’s style shifts to accommodate whatever activity she is doing. “What I wear to dinner is different from what I wear to class,” she said. Murray’s night-out attire consists of more conservative pieces, often a long skirt or blazer. “[I] love people that dress the way they want to, but for me, a conservative look [is] better on my figure,” Murray said.

Rachel Ellenbogen

Rachel Ellenbogen, a fifth-year fashion design student at Parsons from Westchester, New York, said her eclectic style knows no bounds but centers on comfort in the classroom.

“I don’t really follow a certain aesthetic,” Ellenbogen said. “I just wear things that I think are nice or cute.”

She wore an all black outfit featuring playful textures, prints and accessories to class this Wednesday. “I’m wearing this sparkly [cardigan], which kind of makes the entire outfit,” she said. “[Also] pinstripe jeans, and I’m wearing a black turtleneck,… this cute little beaded necklace and just some black short, heeled boots.”

Ellenbogen said she got her necklace at a craft fair in the East Village, from a seller named Sahiba Johar. “She really deserves a shout-out,” Ellenbogen said. “She’s obviously very talented.”

While this ensemble didn’t include any pieces she made, Ellenbogen said her own pieces often find their way into her personal wardrobe. “I definitely like to wear the stuff that I make.” 

After attending online classes during quarantine, Ellenbogen said her style hasn’t changed much since returning to campus this fall. She said she typically wears a T-shirt, jeans and boots to college — usually not stressing about her day-to-day look as she searches for a comfortable outfit for class.

Ellenbogen said attending Parsons has been a dream of hers since childhood. “I’ve wanted to go to Parsons, since I was like, 11 or 12,” She said. “That was my goal.” In her first year at The New School, Ellenbogen said she felt some pressure to dress up in a high-fashion environment like Parsons. However, she said that as she’s grown over the years, she’s come to care less about dressing up for class. “It’s all about what I make, not really what I wear,” she said. “Unless I’m wearing what I make.”