Everything is an Accessory

My freshman year at Waterloo was 2015, right at the peak of the hackathon era. Looking back, college hackathon culture was crazy. You could travel all across North America for free because the hackathons would cover your expenses. We’d stay up for 24+ hours building apps, websites, and robots.

One clear sign that you were part of this culture was a laptop decked out in hackathon stickers. We collected them like Pokémon badges. If someone’s laptop was covered with stickers from UPenn’s PennApps, Stanford’s TreeHacks, Michigan’s MHacks, or our very own Hack the North, you knew they were a cracked engineer—you wanted that guy on your team.

Hackathon culture was quite the era, but it started cooling off by the late 2010s.

Lately, inspired by my friend Rishi, I’ve been wanting to deck out my laptop again. Right now, it’s completely bare, but I want to change that. I already have a few ideas: definitely a One Piece sticker, my company’s logo, a Toronto Raptors sticker. What’s my favourite movie? Ou how about a Studio Ghilbi sticker. I’m getting hyped just thinking about it.

What I love about fashion is that it’s a way to tell your story without saying a word—and it goes way beyond just your clothes.

I like to think that everything you carry is an accessory: your bag, your watch, your phone case, your laptop, even your water bottle. Each one is an opportunity to express yourself and tell your story.