How many dresses to take to oxford uni as a fresher

How many dresses did you take to oxford uni as a fresher and where would you recommend getting them from? Like dresses used for formals, BOP's etc. And any advice for starting at oxford uni as a fresher pls! I live on the ground floor so im really worried about people looking into my room and having to keep my curtains closed all the time.

Reply 1

Stiffy Byng

Take as many dresses or as few dresses as you wish, mindful of the need to store them and (in most colleges) to clear your room during vacations.

There are at least two vintage clothes stores in Oxford where you can obtain second hand finery, helping to save the planet by doing so. One is at Cowley Plain, which is the roundabout on the eastern side of Magdalen Bridge, not far from St Hilda's. Another is on Ship Street, beside Jesus. That one is run by the same charmingly bonkers French lady who was selling second hand clothes to undergraduates forty years ago.

The usual commercial outlets can be found on Cornmarket and in and near the Westgate shopping centre, and there are places in the Covered Market which sell frocks. For swirly boho hippy garments check out Little Clarendon Street, which used to be known as Little Trendy Street (I don't know if it still is).

I doubt that window gazers will be a problem unless, perhaps, you live in a college which attracts Harry Potter tourists, such as Christ Church or New College.

You may recall Cousin Jasper's advice about rooms in the front quad in Brideshead Revisited (advice which Charles Ryder cheerfully ignores):-

Finally, just as he was going, he said, "One last point. Change your rooms." They were large, with deeply recessed windows and painted, eighteenth-century panelling; I was lucky as a freshman to get them. "I've seen many a man ruined through having ground-floor rooms in the front quad," said my cousin with deep gravity. "People start dropping in. They leave their gowns here and come and collect them before hall; you start giving them sherry. Before you know where you are, you've opened a free bar for all the undesirables of the college."

I do not know that I ever, consciously, followed any of this advice. I certainly never changed my rooms; there were gillyflowers growing below the windows which on summer evenings filled them with fragrance.

I wish you a happy and successful time at Oxford.

Reply 2

TypicalNerd

Original post by Anonymous

As a dude, I don’t exactly wear dresses and so it’s not an area where I can give much helpful advice.

You will need a gown and subfusc for matriculation if you haven’t already got it. To be quite honest, these will probably do for formal dinners (I know some colleges require you to wear a gown to formals). To know what it is you will need, look here: https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/dress

Walter’s of Oxford (outside Lincoln College) is where I got mine. I believe they have a deal where you can get a mortar board, gown and tie for roughly £40 if memory serves. You can also procure subfusc from Walter’s if you don’t already have it sorted - but you can definitely find appropriate options elsewhere and for less. Heck, you could probably even find a number of suitable clothes in a charity shop nearby if you wanted to save money.

As for advice to freshers, it’s hard to offer anything specific as I don’t know which course you are doing and unless you are at St John’s, I can’t tell you much about what college life is likely to be like. Have time organisation tools like a timetable, allocate sensible amounts of time towards prep work for tutorials (reading/tute sheets/whatever) and make sure you have a means of blowing off some steam (there are plenty of societies and lovely places to take a walk in Oxford and I’ve heard there are plenty of excellent clubs if that’s your thing). You should also be aware that the terms are short and so you are expected to do a lot of work from home (annoyingly, they don’t tend to tell you how much time to spend and so you have to be the judge of that) and this will mean making sure you can access Canvas etc.

I hope you enjoy your time at Oxford and your studies go swimmingly.

Reply 3

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Bop costumes are self-made or more informal, so you don't need fancy things for those usually. Formal hall, I guess it depends on the college and how fancy their formal halls are? I was at Worcester (Woosta) College, and used to just wear smart casual with the gown thrown on top. I wasn't one for wearing dresses much at that time, so I'd just wear trousers and a smart casual top. Never got thrown out of formal for my lack of dress-wearing! :nah:

Ball gowns and stuff would obviously need to be more formal but I can't advise much on that I'm afraid (I rarely attended balls and when I did, I wore national dress rather than ballgowns!) :colondollar: