Text and photo Ana Clara Mattiuzzi Martins
You see great-looking people in awesome outfits on Wageningen campus. In this column, we put one of them in the spotlight. This time, it’s Lilly Erdmann, a Forest & Nature Conservation MSc student from Germany.
‘I’ve been working for the past year in a garden centre, where I could never wear nice outfits. I was outside all day getting dirty. But since I’ve started studying in Wageningen, I can indulge my fashion urges again.
‘I don’t think a lot about what I am wearing. I just follow my whims; sometimes it comes out weird and sometimes nice. How else are you going to figure out what actually works? I remember in middle school putting on leggings for the first time and I thought: what is this? I know everybody’s wearing them, so I’m going to try it. But it’s just not my thing.
What I wear depends on my mood. If I’m in a good mood, you’ll get a nice outfit; if not, then you’ll get a sweater and trousers.
I get a lot of inspiration from my friends, the internet and the queer scene. I get all of my clothes second-hand: I find them on Vinted or sometimes people give them to me. It feels like people are giving clothes away everywhere, and I just pick them up. Sometimes I have something in my cupboard for three years until suddenly I realize the outfit has been waiting all this time for this one specific moment. But even then it was worth keeping the clothes.’
