Recruitment Outfit Guide

Rush outfit guide

With sorority recruitment right around the corner, there is a question that is plaguing the minds of girls everywhere: “What do I wear?!” Well, look no further! Everything you need to know for rush apparel is right here.

The most important thing to remember when dressing for recruitment is to let your personality shine through. Recruitment only gives you a short amount of time to let the sorority women get to know you, so use your style to help express your personality. Although you have criteria for what to wear each day, you still have a lot of freedom to choose the actual garments that you’ll be wearing, so use that to your advantage. Also, you can always use your jewelry, shoes, and makeup to add little touches of your personal style to any outfit.

As you’re shopping for your recruitment outfits, keep in mind that you’re dressing to impress girls. You want your clothes to be flattering but not overly sexy or revealing. You also want to make sure that you always look put together, so avoid having visible bra straps or short skirts and dresses that you’re constantly having to pull down. Also, make sure that you dress appropriately for the weather (you’ll thank me later).

The clothing requirements are different for every school, but you’ll most likely have some mix of a casual day, a business casual day, a business professional day, and a cocktail day.

Casual day:

You might be given a t-shirt that everyone has to wear. It’s important to remember that, even though you’re wearing a t-shirt, this is not an invitation to sport your best athleisure. You should still dress up by wearing slacks, nice jeans or shorts, or even a flowy skirt. If you're not assigned a t-shirt, you should pick a fashionable and flattering top, trendy bottoms, and awesome shoes (duh). Some schools recruit in the fall and some in the spring, so make sure you're dressing for whichever season your recruitment occurs in.

Show your personality in this with trendy jewelry like layered necklaces or bracelets. You can even tie your t-shirt to make it stand out from all the other rushees'.

Also, make it your own with your choice of footwear; you can dress it up with cute booties or strappy sandals. You should certainly make sure that your hair and makeup looks just as nice as it does for the dressier days, to punctuate the look.

Let's Talk Business

If you’re instructed to wear business casual or business professional, you should put extra attention into looking appropriate. But don’t show up in a plain black jacket with a briefcase as if you’re going to work; you should still look stylish.

Business Casual:

There are so many possibilities! You can wear nice pants with a tank top, a colored blazer, and heels. A patterned short suit can be really unique and fashionable for business casual. You could also wear a pencil skirt (not the spandex kind) with a nice top and funky booties. Experiment with unique garments like drapey sweaters or fur vests. Business casual is a blank canvas through which to show how you like to dress.

Business Professional:

You should wear an outfit that is appropriate enough to wear to a job interview. Dresses with high necklines are very popular right now and work so well for business professional. If you can rock it, you could even wear a cool jumpsuit and heels. Make sure that the material of your clothing for this round is nice and doesn’t look cheap. Ways to show your personality on this day include colorful heels, or cool jewelry. If you haven’t worn it on a previous day, you could wear a statement necklace, or add some edginess with an ear cuff, lots of funky rings, or a high-arm bracelet.

The Home Stretch

Cocktail:

You will usually be asked to wear cocktail attire for preference round, or ‘pref.’ Pref is the day before bid day, so it’s a great opportunity to take note of who is at your houses with you and see who could potentially be in your pledge class. For pref, it is a good idea to stay away from black dresses if you can, because most of the sorority women wear black and you’ll want to be memorable. Although most people wear cocktail dresses for pref, you can also wear a fancy skirt suit or jumpsuit. Again, make sure that you are wearing high-quality material, and that your outfit is flattering but not too revealing. Pref is a great day to wear your best heels!