Dressing for Socials
by Chiara Cimmino
When it comes to hockey, the sport itself isn’t the only thing, there are also the socials that need to be taken into consideration. When it comes to socials, fashion goes completely out of the window, so here’s my advice on how to dress for them.
As a fresher last year, I had no idea how much effort went into the socials themselves, especially the costumes. Each week for the girls there was a new theme. The themes ranged from: carrots, robots, Toga night, trolls, babies, and so much more.
As someone who had to prepare for such socials each week there were concerns for how much all these costumes would cost. However, overall, it can be really cheap if you plan it well.
My first tip would be to make sure you have cardboard. Lots and lots of cardboard. You can either keep the boxes and flatten them from things you have ordered, or if you live on Bay campus as I did, in the archway by Tesco they have a mountain of cardboard which we used for our costumes.
The aim of these socials was never to look good, in fact, the crazier you looked, the better praise you received. Fashion went completely out of the window and the evening itself was just a laugh. One of the first socials we ever had was carrots, and we had to body paint ourselves entirely in orange and spray paint our hair green! It’s often useful to go costume shopping with members of your team to make things a bit cheaper for yourself and make the experience more fun. I definitely recommend going to Poundland for materials to decorate your costume, it’s located near Primark.
One of the more interesting socials we had was anything but clothes, where we had to make our own clothes from scratch. We were not allowed to use bin bags and then tie with a piece of string. What one of my friends did was use some of her Ikea bags and make a dress and bucket hat out of it, there are many YouTube videos on how to make clothes from Ikea bags. I, however, made my costume from J-cloths and Tesco bags. J-cloths are pretty cheap and you will always have a shopping bag lying around to use. I also made a belt from some string and extra material I had from the J-cloths. It most certainly did not look good, but it did the trick and stayed intact for the whole evening.
All in all, dressing up for socials and preparing your costumes can be super fun, and it doesn’t have to be expensive at all! If you are someone who does like to dress up, don’t worry. It’s not all about the costumes and looking crazy, there are also a couple “dress to impress” nights where you can put a dress on and some makeup (and no body paint)!
