Grad Clothes, Grad Woes

Scene

May 29

Across campus, I have heard shockingly few people talking about the most important piece of the grad ensemble, the dress. Traditionally at Santa Clara, these dresses are white and are worn in grad photos with red stoles and champagne bottles in the fountain in front of the Mission Church.

While this dress is mostly covered by the gown on graduation day, it is the only thing we wear that is our choice, the only thing that makes us unique and because of that, many feel anxiety about getting it just right. A uniqueness that is often limited by the fact that most of these dresses do end up looking similar.

The best way I can share the anxiety and anticipation surrounding grad dresses is through my own journey and that of my three roommates, the lovely women I will be taking my grad pictures with.

First up is Paulina Ursua Garcia, the one of us who put the most emphasis on picking a grad dress and who started looking the earliest. Ursua Garcia took the online shopping route and has been passively looking for her dress since February but started looking seriously in April. She ended up selecting two dresses, a black one with white pleats at the bottom for photos and an all-white one for graduation day.

“I wanted something that was elegant and felt more like a woman graduating college compared to a girl graduating high school,” said Ursua Garcia.

By contrast, Karla Santos was yet to find her graduation dress and was yet to start looking earnestly, a week before we took our photos.

“So, grad pictures kind of caught me by surprise,” said Santos. “I didn't realize I needed to have like my whole life together for one photo shoot.”

Even before she had her dress, Santos knew it’s importance and wanted to find one that represented her well.

“I want to do myself justice,” said Santos. “ I know it's a really really big accomplishment. I just want to do myself that favor by celebrating with my friends through this photoshoot being happy and confident and the dress that I wear is a part of that.”

Personally, I was so exhausted by even the prospect of looking for a new dress that I originally planned on using my high school graduation dress, a $25 dress from Fred Meyer. It was for this article that Christina Nelson, my third roommate, and I decided to do the thing I dreaded most and headed to the mall; Nelson hoped to find her dress and I was looking for shoes.

In our four-hour trek through the mall, visiting Abercrombie, Aritzia, Anthropologie and roughly 15 more stores, I surprised myself and got both a dress and shoes. I ended up with a $100 white Steve Madden dress from Bloomingdale’s and $20 heels from Express in their store-closing sale, mainly motivated by my flip-flops breaking on my way into the store. Nelson got her $40 red dress from Cornerstore Baearea, a thrift resale store, our second to last stop at Valley Fair.

The search for the perfect dress reminded us of when our graduation was cut short in high school. Losing our high school graduations to COVID put more pressure on this moment and this dress.

“During my high school graduation, because it was COVID, [a grad dress] was not my priority at all,” said Ursua Garcia. “So I reused a dress that I already had. That's why for this college dress I put more effort in because I didn't do that in my high school dress.”

“I actually don't remember what I wore to high school graduation,” said Nelson.

Our high school graduation dress experience being lost, along with many other things, helped all of us want to make our dresses our own and fit our personal styles. Which, thus far, has left me as the only one wearing the traditional short, white dress.

I struggled to understand why we as a friend group felt so comfortable breaking an unspoken tradition so easily. Santos put it a really interesting way.

“I think we don't really care because we've never really subscribed to the Santa Clara culture,” said Santos. “We just don't care. Like I don't feel a sense of unity within the full Santa Clara community. So why would I change myself to fit the picture that I've never wanted to be in?”

Our friend group having a unique perspective on Santa Clara culture will be captured in our photos with black, red, and white dresses. Perhaps that represents us better than subscribing to any traditional Santa Clara formula but truly showing up to graduation as ourselves.

The uniqueness of these photos comes from the person wearing it, not the dress itself. Your grad photos represent the completion of a four-year journey and the group of people who helped you survive it. I’m lucky to have had these wonderful women by my side over the years and to have that captured in champagne-popping photos in front of the mission.