It’s football season — the highly anticipated time of the year when a sea of garnet and black floods Williams-Brice Stadium and stays until invisible glasses are raised, win or lose.
For some, it’s a semester of stats and backseat coaching, and for others, it’s the SEC’s version of Vogue. For many, it’s a little bit of both.
What started as a casual T-shirt-and-shorts scene now has a near runway-level dress code for many. Skirts, dresses, accessories, boots and more have taken game days by storm, with some outfits costing upwards of hundreds of dollars.
“The SEC is like a fashion show,” said Jaimye Hydrick, the manager of the recently opened Gamecock-centered location of the Rally House college apparel chain. “The girls are dressed to impress. They have their dresses, their hair done, makeup done. The same with the boys now; they’re wearing pants and polos and boots. So, I think it will be pretty consistent, but there will always be small trends to switch it up a little bit.”
As University of South Carolina fans’ closets continue to evolve, so does the fashion industry. And a new wave of strategies — from renting to embracing upcycling — has hit the SEC and changed the process for good.
The newest game day trend
Renting clothes for football games has become the new normal within SEC schools.
Essie’s Closet, one of a growing number of clothing rental services across the Southeast, started just two years ago at its flagship location in Auburn and has already expanded into the Carolinas.
The clothing store, located at 1568 Sunnyside Dr. in Forest Acres, offers customers the opportunity to rent clothes for any occasion through a system where they pay a portion of the original price to have and return the clothes for three to 10 days at a time. It also allows customers to apply to rent out their own clothes for a piece of the profit.
Abby Churilla, the owner of Essie’s, has seen at both Auburn and USC the benefit of renting game day clothes versus buying new.
Rent Essies sign sticks on the door in Forest Acres, SC.
“Usually people get pictures and you post in your outfit. Once you do that, a lot of people don’t re-wear the same one,” Churilla said. “I think buying a whole outfit, which usually is like a minimum of $10, can seem really impractical for a game day when you’re only going to wear the outfit once.”
According to Churilla, Essie’s curates its collections and customers by going straight to the source.
“I went to a couple of sororities at the beginning of the year, did a couple of chapter visits. I had DM’d some people when I was first starting,” Churilla said. “They would want to be someone that rented out their clothes and kind of help spread the word.”
Some fans, like Grace Ashley, a recent graduate of the University of South Carolina, have even stopped buying game day clothes altogether because of the option to rent.
“I would get specific pieces, but I knew I wouldn’t want them in my closet because I wouldn’t ever wear them again,” said Ashley. “That’s why I felt like renting was best for me.”
Hats sit on display at Miss Cocky Boutique on Main Street in Columbia, SC.
Oldie but goodie
While renting seems to be the newest addition to the game day fashion craze, game day-specific clothing stores are still thriving, especially when family and friends come to town.
Even though most clothing stores geared toward students cater mainly to women in a boutique style, more generic college stores featuring a wide selection of men’s clothing are also on the rise.
Rally House, a recent addition to the Columbia game day fashion scene, carries all types of clothing for any type of fan — from T-shirts to sweatshirts to general USC merchandise.
The store opened in April, and Hydrick, the manager (also known as the “head coach”) of the store, has seen firsthand an upward trend in men’s clothing for games, especially in one specific clothing item.
“I would say that men do care about how they dress and 95 percent of them want some kind of polo to wear to the game days,” Hydrick said. “Our company, actually, I don’t think they thought we were going to do as well as we did, especially in the polos. So we’ve had a couple of weeks where we only had double XLs left of every single polo.”
Rally House joins a number of these USC-focused stores that have opened within the past year, including Alumni Hall in the BullStreet District and a second Rally House location on Assembly Street.
A variety of clothes hang in Miss Cocky Boutique.
While more and more school-spirit-centric stores pop up in and around the area, neighborhood favorites, like Miss Cocky — the local Gamecock boutique that has been in Columbia since 2009 — continue to get consistent business.
Addie Altemus, the general manager of all three Miss Cocky locations, said it’s the store’s customized styles and hometown partnerships that help set the store apart.
“We do a lot of custom stuff for Carolina, so the owner works with a lot of brands when she’s at market with them and customizes,” Altemus said. “I know some of the other stores, the bigger competition stores that have opened recently, I think they’re more corporatized in styles. We have a lot of custom and different pieces which is really fun.”
A little bit of both
With buying and renting, trends are prevalent throughout the racks. But some believe that buying secondhand can provide a different type of trend: exclusivity.
Hammered Daisy, an upcycling business that also specializes in game day attire, focuses on buying secondhand clothing and reworking them or selling them as is — creating unique pieces for any fan.
Lindsay Hammer, the owner and creator of Hammered Daisy, started her business because she wanted to bring her love of upcycling and thrifting to Columbia.
Two of Hammer’s patchwork designs sold on the company’s website
“You’re not mass producing something because so much stuff already exists,” Hammer said. “So if I can make something look new and different out of something that already exists and has been worn, then that gives it that new feel.”
The small business does a large chunk of its sales at the weekly Soda City Market in downtown Columbia and other markets in and around the Carolinas. The brand also has a section at Main Street’s Shoppes at Tapp’s, which is open throughout the week.
Hammer feels like the comeback of secondhand clothing might stem from young people watching older generations.
“I would hope that younger generations sometimes see what has happened with older generations and they’re like, ‘We don’t have to continue this exact purchasing pattern or trend or whatever it is,’ and they’re like, ‘I do care what happens to the Earth in 50 years,’” Hammer said. “I think people always want to create their own lane, too.”