Graduation outfit costs are on the minds of hundreds of thousands of students crossing stages across the UK this summer, and the numbers add up faster than many expect. Cap and gown hire, photography packages, travel, accommodation, the outfit itself: the total can run into several hundred pounds, all landing at the moment students are, financially speaking, at their most stretched.
Keeping Graduation Outfit Costs Down
Keerthana Krishnadas had been planning her look since the first week of her course. ‘From the beginning of my course, I’ve been thinking about what my graduation dress was going to be,’ she says. ‘I had to make sure I looked 10 out of 10, I couldn’t compromise on that.’ Her solution was to shop second-hand online. The dress cost her £80. ‘A bargain,’ she says.
Alicia Munhupedzi took the same route, turning to Depop, the second-hand clothing app popular with Gen Z shoppers. Depop is currently the subject of a eBay acquisition from Etsy for approximately $1.2 billion, a deal expected to close in Q2 2026, pending regulatory approval. The platform had 7 million active buyers as of 31 December 2025, nearly 90% of whom were under 34, alongside more than 3 million active sellers and annual gross merchandise sales of approximately $1 billion in 2025, with close to 60% year-over-year growth in the US. For Alicia, it was a practical choice rather than a philosophical one. ‘I thought, where can I get a nice dress really quickly and cheaply?’ Depop had the answer.
Others went further. Ehis Oboh, who has just completed a master’s degree in international business, wore a suit made by his younger brother, a tailor based in Nigeria. Wendy Adu Amankwah’s mother, a designer, spent a week making her daughter’s outfit. ‘I feel like you have to because it’s your day,’ Wendy says. ‘We go through a lot to get a master’s degree so you have to look your best on the day.’
The costs are not trivial even after creative savings. Hiring a cap and gown at the University of Salford runs to £42 for undergraduates and postgraduates and £45 for PhD students. Across the river at the University of Manchester, undergraduates and postgraduates pay £43, while doctoral candidates pay £57. Professional photography packages at Salford start at £30 for a single digital image and rise to £350 for approximately 20 prints of two images, with mounts and frames. Tom Allingham of Save The Student is blunt about the photography pricing: ‘The price of photography on the day, it’s extortionate.’
There is also a social pressure that cuts across income levels, Allingham argues. ‘For those who are the first person in their family to go to uni, it’s a big deal for the family and there’s a pressure to celebrate it, even though those students often come from a lower income background.’
A Loan That Doesn’t Stretch Far Enough
The financial squeeze around graduation does not arrive in isolation. According to the 2025 National Student Money Survey, which polled 1,151 university students between June and August 2025 and is published by Times Higher Education, students spend an average of £1,142 per month on living costs yet receive only £640 per month in maintenance loans, producing a shortfall of £502 every month. That gap is covered, sometimes only partially, by parental contributions, part-time work, and debt.
The structural problem predates the current cost-of-living crunch. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, reported by Forbes Advisor UK, found that maintenance loan payments underwent a real-terms cut of 11% between September 2020 and September 2023, leaving students worse off by £107 per month. Allingham frames the timing plainly: graduation arrives when students are ‘the least financially resilient’, having absorbed the costs of studying all year.
Etsy, meanwhile, has its own reasons for letting Depop go. The company’s CFO Lanny Baker explained the decision in the Etsy investor announcement: ‘We believe that obtaining a strong value for Depop now and focusing on Etsy, where we believe we can achieve a higher rate of return on invested capital, will best enable us to maximize shareholder value in the long term.’ Whether that sale alters what Depop means to a student hunting for a bargain dress the night before graduation is another matter.
Keerthana woke at 05:00, spent two hours getting ready, and says every minute was worth it. ‘This is the only moment you get for yourself,’ she says. The students who planned ahead, borrowed a sibling’s sewing machine, or refreshed Depop at midnight would probably agree. The ones who paid £350 for the framed prints might take a little longer to come round.
