Graduation outfits: Students tell us how to impress on a budget

Like Keerthana, Alicia Munhupedzi used the internet to find her dress – though it was a bit last minute.

“I thought, ‘Where can I get a nice dress really quickly and cheaply?'”

The answer? Depop, the second-hand clothing app popular among Gen Z shoppers that sold for $1.2bn (£890m) earlier this year.

Like others, Alicia felt her outfit was important.

“Graduation, it’s a milestone thing, especially if you’re not planning on doing a master’s,” she says. “So, to me, there was a pressure.”

So much so she couldn’t sleep properly the night before her ceremony and woke at dawn to get ready. “I made it through today off two hours of sleep, water, good vibes, energy and a coffee.”

Knowing all eyes would be fixed on her when she was handed her degree, Keerthana says she was nervous for her graduation ceremony – but it passed more quickly than she thought it might.

“This is the only moment you get for yourself,” she says.

And was the 05:00 wake-up and two hours of getting ready worth it?

“Yeah,” Keerthana says, “I couldn’t compromise on that.”

Additional reporting by Kate Berry and George Sandeman.