What I love most about fashion is how a (sub)culture is expressed through clothes. And as the fall fashion week calendar sets the tone for trendspotting and street style stories, I’m turning my sights to the hyperlocal stomping grounds I know intimately—Berkeley Bowl.
So, I present the Berkeley Bowl FW25 Lookbook.
10 people, 10 outfits, 10 grocery baskets. Because the world may be your oyster, but the yogurt aisle is your runway.
It’s a story about grocery trolley carts as accessories, what snacks Cal students are loving, and the item everyone pounces on during the 11am daily restock.
Three quick things:
There’s a ton of images in this newsletter, which will probably get cut off in email…read it in browser for the best experience.
I included the first 10 submissions from the survey, so if you didn’t make it on here, it was not for any particular reason—just the order they were sent in. If the form hits 10 more new submissions, I’d love to do another newsletter this winter/feature you in some way down the line :)
Hayley and Sarah, let me know your emails if you want the comped subscription offer. I added everyone else who participated, but reply to this email and lmk if it didn’t go through.
Look 1: Katie
She/her, 28, local resident, shops at BB West.
I like to slowly transition my look throughout the day, so my Bowl outfits are usually some derivation of what I wore to work—in this case I felt like rocking this vintage gingham top I got at Down at Lulu’s because it makes me feel like a cool lesbian from the 80s, and then I swapped my brown work trousers for a mini when I got home because the sun was shining!
Plus I’m going to a metal show in Oakland tonight and liked the juxtaposition of wearing a lil skirt and white ruffled socks to that kind of an event, so I’ll probably add on a leather jacket as my evening progresses into night.
I work up in the hills and it’s been exceptionally foggy up there in the mornings, which naturally has me on my Strega Nona shit, so I’m making stock! (Not that I’m not a year round soup celebrator, ask me about my 2024 soup log).
If I had more foresight I would’ve saved scraps over the week, but I always fall off with that during the summer, so here I am asking for a pound of chicken feet at the meat counter. The olipop is my drink treat for the evening, and the yerba is my drink treat for my drive up to Guerneville tomorrow.
The coffee was an impulse buy in the discount section (I used to be an original Bowl girl before a recent move, but I will say that West’s bargain section is far superior, heads up moles they have sooo many organic tomatoes on sale rn that my roommate just stocked us up on).
Look 2: Anam
He/they, 26, Cal grad student in geography, shops at BB East.
Outfit: Earthseed Proselytizing in Plasticana Gardana Clogs.
Basket: last minute dinner party stuff.
Look 3: Abby
She/her, 21, Cal undergrad studying Molecular and Cell Biology, shops at BB East.
My typical outfit for any walking errand around Berkeley: a Berkeley farmer's market t-shirt (no jacket with this rare warm weekend), dark-wash jeans, and a very comfortable, well-loved pair of Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66. The key accessory for this trip is my apartment's shared dolly cart, which makes transporting overzealous grocery runs back home a breeze.
The first back-to-school trip at Berkeley Bowl arrives with a theme: a farewell to summer and semester restock. My basket is filled with a sampling of the last batches of summer produce, including a quartet of pluots, Hami melon, and an heirloom tomato (will be making a Kiraku-inspired tomato salad from a recent 21st birthday dinner with my roommate).
I've also added some supplements for early morning 8 AM lectures and quick after-class meals: guava jam for my FAGE yogurt, kefir, emergency ume to go with rice, trail mix, and soft tofu for miso soup.
I usually like inspecting the snack and drink aisles to compare the stock with what's offered at our campus’s Berkeley Student Food Collective. This time, I picked up a bag of peel-able lychee-flavored gummies. I'm excited to bring them along with me to library work sessions. The final additions to my basket: a box of inari sushi and unagi onigiri (well-versed Berkeley Bowl-goers will know that daily restocks happen at ~11AM) as a reward for braving the weekend chaos.
Look 4: Sarah
She/her, 30, Cal grad student in Public Health, shops at BB East.