Many years ago, novelist George Eliot wrote the words, “Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking successive autumns.”

Personally, I am very much in accord with Eliot. Fall is by far my favorite time of the year: The air is crisp, the leaves are falling, Starbucks bestows the first round of holiday drinks upon us and midterms have not quite begun.

Unfortunately, meteorically speaking, we at Georgetown are so close, yet so far. Washington, D.C., or the entire East Coast, rather, is floundering around in the post-summer transitional phase. It is that time of the year when you wake up, look out the window and think to yourself, “Wow, what a nice, sunny, yet chilly day.” And then you step out your door, slightly late for your Spanish class on the fourth floor of Walsh, for example, and find yourself awkwardly sweating through your T-shirt 30 seconds later.

It happens. I’m putting it out there.

Which is where utility dressing comes into play.

Utility dressing is dressing for a purpose rather than a look. It is the kind of thing that makes people think that it is OK to wears Crocs. Which it is not. Ever.

But utility dressing also ushered in the invention of various items like bras, overalls and those weird baseball caps with the cape on the back. For the most part, I do not believe that anyone really enjoys wearing any of these items, but they serve a purpose. They are, in an antithetically fashionable sense, useful.

Similarly, a trend has cropped up in the advertising world over the last few years of marketing clothes not for what they look like, but for how they are made and what they are made of. Organic cotton, for instance, has become very chic; clothing Web sites have begun to list garments as “eco-friendly,” ergo rifling through your closet each morning is the sartorial equivalent to recycling plastic bottles.

It brings up an interesting notion, which, in truth, probably has the potential of reducing John Galliano to tears: Are clothes merely items which serve a purpose, no different than, say, blenders or doormats?

Many people, I believe, would answer “yes” to this question, but undoubtedly they are the same people who keep the Croc industry afloat. People who attest to having no interest in fashion are kidding themselves as they still make the conscious decision of buying the blue cargo pants over the green ones, for instance, and that choice is, to their shock and horror, considered to be “having a fashion sensibility.”

We all like to look nice, despite any protestation to the contrary, but perhaps now is just not the time. It becomes difficult to look pulled together when the weather can go from clear skies to bucketing sheets of rain in under 20 seconds. It is that time of the year when those of us who admit to caring must put our pride aside and forgo the “outfits” in favor of whatever makes us look the least like we sprinted to class across the Sahara.

Finally, however, the distinction should be made between dressing for a cause and dressing for a purpose. Stella McCartney, with her leather- and fur-free creations, is the guiding ambassador of this side of the industry. Seasons aside, environmentally friendly clothing has always been a fantastic concept as it reduces the presence of Third World sweatshops and reprehensible working conditions. And you never know, that organic cotton T-shirt may save our environment/economy/sense of national stability more than any offshore drilling ever could.

Kidding. Sort of.

Caroline Smith is a junior in the College. She can be reached at smith@thehoya.com. The Hoya Wears Prada appears every other Friday in The Guide.