The style of your traditional frat bro has changed a lot in recent years. When anyone over the age of 27 hears the word “frat” they immediately think of a group of dudes who look exactly like this.
Yes, this is a real photo that was once posted to Total Frat Move. However, it no longer properly displays frat bros in today’s society.
We are all aware that frat guys used to dress exactly like the Real Bros of Simi Valley. That meant neon colored polo shirts, tank tops (not to be confused with cutoffs), khaki shorts, Vineyard Vines hats, and of course Sperrys. However, I can promise you that nowadays, you will never find a frat bro wearing boat shoes or any shirt that has buttons on it.
To update the generation that has since faded out of frat culture, here is an updated guide to dressing frat.
The first thing I’ll say is that your typical frat bro doesn’t dress like a frat bro. Back when pastel colored shirt and short combos were the norm for frat guys, it was clearly an attention thing. Dudes wanted to stand out in a crowd so girls would notice them. Honestly if that’s your strategy then yeah, wearing bright pink from head-to-toe is probably the best way to go.
Thing is, we don’t really care about attention anymore. In the age of legalized weed and Tiktok, people have become much lazier. In fact, I’d go as far to say that frat bros are the laziest of the bunch. Thus, in a bid to switch from gaining attention to achieving maximum comfort, we have ultimately swapped out our Crayola khakis for sweatpants.
While frat boys used to color coordinate their outfits, we now dress like people who haven’t been outside in years.
That means from the time we wake up until the time we go out for the night, we look exactly like Jason Segal in the beginning of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. If you don’t get that reference, I’m talking about the greatest article of clothing known to mankind: sweatpants.
Frat guys love sweatpants. We live in them. Hell, I’m wearing some right now as I type this. No matter how hot it is outside, we will make sure to keep our legs covered and toasty because we know the only thing getting us off the couch is the five seconds when we need to meet our UberEats driver. We’re not going to class, we’re not studying in the library, and even if we do exercise we’re sure as shit not doing cardio, so there really isn’t any reason to ever take off our beloved sweats.
In keeping with that theme of comfiness, every frat guy now has a pair of slippers. Though we all called Ugg “gay” when we were 14, they truly do make a quality product. Every step is like walking on a furry cloud that took three dead sheep to make. I will be the first to say that is a small price to pay for comfort.
In terms of shirts, there is a ton of variety. Some people wear classic t-shirts with greek letters, frockets, or both. Others wear cutoffs made from their old high school baseball warmup shirts. And then there are the guys that wear hoodies every single day to truly maximize their comfortability.
However, night time is different. From the hours of 10pm-2am we are forced to ditch our beloved sweats in hopes of attracting a female companion. For whatever reason, girls seem to like jeans. Though they make me feel fat and accentuate the largeness of my thighs, it’s unfortunately what we have to do. So at bars, expect to see waves of dudes wearing jeans, white sneakers, and a t-shirt that is either black, white, gray, or navy. For guys that want to stand out, possibly something green, purple, or patterned. That’s kind of about it.
Then, once we get drunk enough to the point where we are slurring Future lyrics and calling every girl that doesn’t want us a bitch, we ultimately head home and immediately get back into uniform. It will often be the same pair of sweatpants we had on the entire day and we will certainly wear them again tomorrow.
So while the modern frat dude doesn’t wear anything spectacularly interesting or eye-catching, I personally think it’s for the best. At least now our new style doesn’t make it look like we’re attending a lesbian wedding.
