The first week of classes is perfection. You’re skinny, tan, well-rested, and you’ve consumed enough caffeine to be ready for anything your professor or president throw your way. Syllabus week is the best time of your college career. All it requires is that you show up for an hour (hopefully less), look your best, and then disappear into a blackout haze for the rest of the week. For this first week, exclusively, you love all of your sisters equally (including the ones who slipped through the cracks), you have yet to get passive aggressive with your roommates, and you don’t have to start stressing about who to bring to your first date party, even though it’s always too close for comfort. The best part of your return to campus is that you haven’t given up yet. You’re rocking your chicest outfits, because your transition to norts is still three to five benders away.
The first week of class is like New Year’s Eve, style-wise. It determines how you want to dress the rest of the year, even if the reality is that you’ll revert back to your uniform soon enough. While you may not look your very best when you’re hungover as hell, you can pretend you’re perfect on the first day of classes, and convince everyone else you are, too. Whether you’re trying to impress your perfect new pledge class, a particular suitor, or you’re gearing up for second semester rush already, your ensemble is everything.
Sundress and Sandals
You’re dressed to impress. You spent the summer daydreaming, Pinteresting, and online shopping for the perfect sundress that shows just enough skin to make an impression on any cute boys in your class…and the professor, just in case your grade needs it. You plan on getting all A’s this semester, and if you don’t, you’re fine with flashing a little cleavage at office hours. You knew better than to rock your letters, because you plan on going to happy hour the second class lets out.
Perfectly Preppy
You’re a sorority advisor’s wet dream, because you look you could never be a risk management issue. While you don’t look exactly like Kate Upton, you’re wearing enough Yurman to be their newest spokesmodel. It’s just a little too much, but it’s also making everyone who overdid it last night at the bar green with envy, and not just because they’re nauseous. You’re either a freshman or your house’s president, but either way, your exuding a try-hard vibe in a serious way. You’re sitting front and center with your overstuffed bag, which is Vineyard Vines, Tory Burch, or Lilly Pulitzer. Your curls are pageant ready, which makes sense because you were probably in a pageant or two back in the day. Your planner and Tervis tumbler are perfectly coordinated and monogrammed with your initials– at least for now, you’ve already started practicing your monogram for your latest love interest. You’re an overachiever and a half, which is why your sisters both love and deeply fear you.
Jean Queen
You’re chill as fuck — or at least, that’s what you want people to believe. You’re very convincing. In reality, you spent the entirety of summer perusing Pinterest in order to perfect your bohemian chic vibe. Your top came from Bloomingdale’s, Saks, or a trendy local boutique, in order to ensure that no other girl on campus would have it. Your sorority has a reputation for being laid-back, which really means that most of the girls smoke a lot of weed, which is what allows them to be perceived as way more chill than the rest of the addied and latted up sorority girls on campus. You haven’t even thought about stressing about your upcoming date party, because you’re too cool to, and despite it being the start of the semester, you already have a boy or three waiting for you in the wings. You’re too cool for most of the campus bars, and you’ve already started to feel a hundred years old whenever you venture to the dining hall. You want the rest of campus to know that you’re the opposite of a try-hard, and with your fringed bag and $200 t-shirt, you’re succeeding. You barely made it to the first day of class because you were so hungover, and you probably won’t go to many classes after this week, but you’ll definitely be spottable out every single night.
Dressed To Pin
Girlfriend is convinced that sky-high heels are elegant, but it sometimes looks like she’s walk of shaming (she may or may not be, it’s unclear). The only ladies who wear heels to class are girls who are shacking, girls in the worst sorority on campus, or girls in the best sorority on campus, with no in between. If you’re smoking hot, maybe, just maybe you can pull it off, but odds are you’ve seen too many movies where perfectly normal characters wear wedges to class (Easy A, I’m talking to you). The only time rocking an LBD mid-day is appropriate is during chapter. You’re probably the recruitment chair, and you’re just trying to make sure you look your bid-day best, which you do, but you’ll certainly start to look a little bit overdressed when the real walk of shaming begins in a week or two.
Quadruple Flaring
We get it. You’re Greek. While I totally understand that you don’t want to be confused with a freshman, or worse yet, a GDI, you don’t need to wear every lettered outfit option you own at once, especially on the first day. Your sorority pride is admirable, and probably means that you’re in charge of sisterhood events or philanthropy. While your recruitment chair has been urging you to wear your letters, they most likely mean a subtle pin, not the weird flip-flops and terrycloth makeup bag you received on bid day because it was sitting in the chapter closet for the last hundred years. If you are quadruple flaring, at least do it in a semi-chic way, instead of pairing all of your letters with a beyond basic bottom, because you’re essentially saying you’ve already given up, and that tomorrow you’ll be rocking sweatptants. Don’t give in, because you have to save that outfit for the gym, finals, or next week, where it belongs.
Nice Move220
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Fleur de Lilly
Fleur de Lilly (@margaretabrams) is a contributing writer for Total Sorority Move and Post Grad Problems. When she's not corrupting her big's baby, she can be found decoding texts, gravitating towards raised surfaces, and spending time with her gentleman caller, Jack Daniels. She loves Lilly, Louisiana, and her lineage.
@margaretabrams
@margaretabrams
