You’re probably staring at the title of this article and wondering, “Why is she looking for a graduation dress? It’s only February.” While it’s “only” February, the semester is only 15 weeks long and we’re already in week six, so that means that Mother’s Day is next weekend, and I should already have a job with benefits lined up. But I digress. For the last four years, graduation has loomed in the back of my mind and I always told myself to stay present and in the moment, and while that partially worked, another part of my brain was focused on what I should wear to graduation. After all, this is my first real graduation — my 2020 and 2021 high school grads can relate to this one! Nevertheless, a few weeks ago, I started searching for the perfect graduation dress.
I hit my first hiccup a few minutes into the search; maybe I’ve been living under a rock for the last 21 years, but apparently, people wear white dresses when they graduate. While I think that makes sense considering white will keep you cool in warmer weather by reflecting the sun, we VCU grads have to wear black, Judge Judy-style gowns that will absorb the sun and make us too toasty anyway. On the other hand, white along with more neutral colors like a creamy yellow, or even red, bare with me here, would complement the less-than-flattering gowns. A few examples of dresses that fit this description are here, here, and here.
As my search continued, I started to wonder if I should really be looking this hard and putting this much pressure on myself to find the “perfect” dress. I mean, do I only want to wear this dress once, or do I want to invest in a dress that I can wear to other important life events? This question lingered on my mind as I realized that it’s really difficult to find a dress for this occasion that’s going to be under $100. Although I didn’t expect a graduation dress that appealed to my style to be super affordable, follow-up questions could be asked such as “Is it really ethical and sustainable to spend $100 on a dress you’re going to wear once?” When I graduated from high school, I purchased a dress that I thought I would wear for years to come, but my style at 17 is extremely different from my current style, and I thank God for that, but will my style drastically evolve again?
Maybe in 10 years, I’ll wish that I had worn a jumpsuit to graduation or that I styled my hair differently. While that might be true, I feel like no matter what we wear on special occasions, we wish we could change something about our look a few years down the road. As a result, I think I’m going to take this dilemma and turn it into a time capsule that I can look back on in twenty years and think “Wow, I was so ahead of my time!” or “Why didn’t I burn that thing years ago?”