My Week in Fancy Dress

As all student fundraisers know, it is deeply difficult to get people to part with money.

Some of us will resort to brave stunts, some to outright begging, and others to making themselves look like idiots in the name of a good cause. I fall into the latter category.

I decided to spend a week in full fancy dress in order to raise money for Practical Action, and I can honestly say that it was the strangest week of my life. I spent a couple of months gathering together a range of bizarrely specific props (an inflatable sword, steampunk goggles and a Hufflepuff scarf – pretty sure the people at Amazon have placed me firmly in the ‘nerd’ category) but despite all my preparations, I wildly underestimated just how strange the experience would be.

I was totally unprepared for the new levels of embarrassment I was about to reach. When you are the only one sitting in a lecture wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat, a bright pink wig, or glasses with buttons taped over the lenses, there is simply no getting away from how utterly ridiculous you look. Clutching an official fundraising can like the last shreds of my dignity, I staggered from lecture to mortifying lecture in a whole new realm of embarrassment. I spent a day wearing an aggressively pink wig, which I’m pretty sure glowed in the dark. It was bitterly cold, so much so that by the time I forced my costumes over the many layers of vests, tights and socks I had to wear, I bore an uncanny resemblance to the Michelin Man. My button-lensed glasses – which seemed like such a good idea at the time – rendered me partially blind for a day and left a mottled pattern of bruises sprawling across my shins.

As the week wore on, I seemed to pass through the other side of embarrassment and gradually just stopped caring. I can’t exactly say I felt comfortable wondering around campus dressed as a Scott Pilgrim character, but I was no longer cringing at the sight of my own reflection. I came to accept the fact that I looked like an idiot, but I also came to enjoy it. By the time I donned my final costume – a Hogwarts uniform, in case you were wondering – I was already beginning to miss it.

If the experience taught me anything – aside from the fact that wearing a wig for a day can sometimes make you feel like a shrunken head – it was to set aside embarrassment. Forgetting your notes for a presentation doesn’t seem quite so humiliating when you have spent a week living out of a dressing-up box, and the sooner that you learn to set aside your burning cheeks and shaking hands, the more enjoyable the world becomes.

**Top Tips for Fancy Dress Fundraising:**

1. Always carry a fundraising tin. People are far more likely to donate to you if you have an official fundraising tin rather than a saucepan or an empty jam jar, but the most important thing is to never be seen without it. Not only do you get more donations, it will stop people mistaking you for a run-of-the-mill weirdo.

2. Do not leave your fundraising tin on a table in Curiositea. It’s just silly.

3. If you are dyeing your hair, always test it first. I cannot stress this enough. One of my costumes required a few cans of spray-in green hair dye, which I presumed would be all right to just stick in and go. An hour before I had to leave the house, my hair was an unfortunate combination of fluorescent and pond-slime green, and I was left looking rather like the Incredible Hulk had sneezed on my head.

4. If it’s winter, you’ll freeze. Buy vests and really long socks in bulk and layer them underneath your costume to avoid looking like an extra from Avatar (unless that’s what you’re going for).

5. Get on with it. If all that’s stopping you from raising money is the fear of looking stupid, you will never get anything done. The sooner that you accept your silly decision, the happier you will be.