December 16, 2016
Warning: the above photo is from a google image search of "fashion week" and not actually taken at AGU.
The night before my early morning flight to San Francisco for the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting, I was plagued with uncertainty. Sure my talk was ready, but I had bigger concerns—what was I going to wear?
It’s a question as old as AGU itself.
Luckily, this wasn’t my first time around the Moscone Center, but I remembered my first time, and how I wished there had been a blog to advise me on what geologists wear to conferences. Dress? Jeans? Heels? T-shirt? Business suit? Flannel? (the answers are yes, yes, sometimes, no, no, and unfortunately yes.)
So here is that blog, so years from now future generations of undergrads and grad students heading to their first conference can look upon my friends and I, and laugh at photos of our outdated clothing and hair, but hopefully get a sense of what people wear to AGU.
Let’s start off with a dude. A cool dude.
I mean look at him; this is a classic AGU male outfit. Its got it all: nice colored fleece thing, nice colored shirt, no tie, brown comfy shoes. A+, Miguel.
While we’re talking men, let’s check out what GSEC President Tomas Capaldi is up to:
I ran into Tomas chatting it up with former Stockli Master’s student Cody Colleps next to the JSG booth. Cody is a great example of what you might see at AGU (read: hiking boots, beard, daypack). After taking pictures of people’s outfits for this blog, I realized that men apparently only wear brown leather shoes. Boring, but efficient and generally attractive. So even though I don’t generally approve of hiking boots in non-hiking settings, Cody blends in well and I think he can pull it off. Speaking of pulling things off, Tomas looks surprisingly well in seafoam green. Looking good, fellas.
But yeah, man clothes are boring so let’s go to the ladies.
First up, undergrad Natalie Raia.
Natalie is adorable in a forest green button down shirt and gray pants. I couldn’t stay too long to discuss fashion because Natalie needed to present her poster, but I was really lucky and ran into another former JSG Stockli Master’s student, Nikki Seymour. An AGU miracle!
Nikki told me about her outfit (blouse: Modcloth, cardigan: Loft), and I realized that I hadn’t taken pictures of anyone in a dress or skirt. Then I realized that I was wearing a dress! I chose it (also from Loft) for its pockets, and I wore a scarf to keep warm in cold meeting rooms. I also wore the same black knee-high boots I had worn all week. Best purchase ever.
Okay, last up is probably the closest one would get to wearing a suit at AGU.
Alissa is wearing a Hillary-inspired red power blazer and jeans (side note: men at AGU wear jackets but rarely wear suits). Jeans are OK at AGU as long as they are really dark and you don’t wear a t-shirt with it.
So there you have it. I hope this blog was informative for people unsure of what to wear at their first conference. See you next year!
