Donning a collared shirt tucked underneath a pastel sweater, Sebastian Lemberger ’25 completes his outfit with a tan blazer and matching tan pants. Through striding along campus in academic attire, Lemberger has crafted a signature, recognizable look for himself. His closet can be described as a sea of beige—his favorite color—and he rotates outfits between his favorite scarves, sweaters, and overcoats that each hold a special, personal name.
In a quest to look as smart as possible, Lemberger sacrifices comfort for the appearance of intellect. His style echoes that of professors and scholars, using fashion to curate a similar intellectual image onto himself.
“My greatest aspiration in life is to appear smarter than I actually am. It’s the only thing to which I aspire and every decision I’ve ever made in my life is done with the objective of appearing smarter than I actually am. As such, I tend to dress in a way that makes people who walk past me look at me and go, ‘wow, he must be exceptionally intelligent.’ I wear blazers and lots of scarves and wool overcoats and other sort of professorial pieces of clothing,” said Lemberger.
As a result of his scholarly style, many have told Lemberger that his outfits resemble the dark academia style. However, Lemberger was not familiar with this style originally, and attributes his fashion inspiration to his grandfather, whom he received many of his clothes from.
“I’ve been told by other people, not myself, that my style could be classified as dark academia. I didn’t know what dark academia was until two years ago. I suppose it could be labeled as inspired by that, even though it technically wasn’t. I also get a lot of clothing from my grandfather, who’s like 80. And so just part of that leads me to dress like an 80-year-old man very frequently. So I guess he’s the closest thing to a fashion muse that I have, mainly because I own a lot of his clothing,” said Lemberger.
In middle school, Lemberger’s style was bolder, and exuded even more intellect. Wearing a bow tie to classes everyday, he was given the nickname, “Young Sheldon.” Desiring the same reputation, but not the nickname, he lost the bow tie and toned down his outfits for high school.
“Fun fact. In middle school, I wore a bow tie to school every day. The other kids in my class called me Young Sheldon. So I figured it was basically the equivalent of what I dress like now, except maybe toned up a bit. I figured, in high school, I’d do something similar, but maybe a bit more mellow. So no one called me Young Sheldon,” said Lemberger.
Known for his long coats, Lemberger described his unique tradition of naming these articles of clothing.
“Probably my coats would be what most people say [I am known for] because I actually name all my coats. The names are Todd, Eugene, and Gerald. The gray one is named Todd. The black one is named Eugene, and the beige one is named Gerald. Todd I’ve had for the longest,” said Lemberger.
Though Lemberger’s closet does not vary in aesthetic, through simple calculations, he has found that he can add variation in his daily outfits through wearing different combinations of pants and shirts.
“Every morning I wake up, I go to my closet, I see what’s clean. Based on that, I choose a shirt and then whatever pair of pants goes with that shirt. I recently found I own more sweaters than I do pants, which is awful. Mathematically, I have at least 10 possible pants combinations for every shirt combination, and I have more shirts than pants, and then sweaters. That’s at least 10 to the third power. So at least a thousand possible outfits, probably more,” said Lemberger.
Lemberger only ever allows himself to dress down when he knows no one will see him. Whether that’s in the comfort of his room, or away from school, he’ll wear a much simpler t-shirt or hoodie. However, in the presence of anybody he knows, he refuses to stray from his signature scholarly style.
“I try never to deviate from the scholarly path, except sometimes on weekends, I don’t want to button a full button-down shirt. So in that case, I’ll wear a hoodie or something, usually if I don’t intend on being seen in public at all. But if I have a class or a meeting or something like that on a given day, I will usually assume my normal dress. And then in the summer, I usually wear t-shirts, again, because no one sees me from school. They can never know,” said Lemberger.
