By e-mail I receive word of a sartorial sophomore who makes GQ look like Roseanne. "At dinner," I read, "he had on a lovely sweater vest overtop (casual for him), button-down, an exquisite tie (Egyptian blue) with an intricate brocade down the center." I scroll down to catch the rest of the message. One phrase sticks out: "He's blind."

I call. "I have a rare vision condition called achromatopsia which entails acute near-sightedness and colorblindness," he says. "Corrected, it is worse than 20/200, which is the legal cutoff for blindness. It's genetic. My brother has it too. We are two of the three people in the state of Oregon who have it."

And the style? "I'm not really interested in fashion," he tells me. "For me, what colors go together and what matches aren't really criteria. I wear clothes that make me feel good. If I saw better, I might have inhibitions." I ask what he's wearing now. "Gray slacks and a gray blazer (but a different shade of gray, I think). I'm wearing a dark vest with a pinstripe and a watch chain; a silk paisley tie with some red, yellow and green; and some sort of black dress shoes."

I look down. A white T-shirt, khaki pants and running shoes with holes near the toes.

I tie my shoes.

Saturday night I meet a senior from the class of '99-'00 with twelve languages from Spanish to Swedish, Italian to Urdu, Punjabi to Persian at the tip of his tongue. (The other half-dozen are Hindi, French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese and, yes, English.) "I was born in India, but we left when I was six months old," he says. "Then we were in Iran for three years, hence the Persian. We speak Hindi at home, but my parents answer in English." Home? "New Jersey."

Soon, the other tongues babble forward. "My parents are ethnically Punjabis...Spanish was high school...After Spanish came French...Urdu spoken is not so different from Hindi...Mandarin I took at Harvard and then I was in Beijing for the summer...German I did at Harvard and I spent all last year in Germany...Swedish was at Harvard too...Portuguese I'm taking now." Next year? "I'm going to be a consultant." Ah, a Harvard student after all.