How to make your own graduation hood using stuff that’s already in your house

For many finalists, myself included, there is currently a tricky decision to make between graduating in absentia and not getting to have a degree ceremony or postponing your graduation indefinitely. We can all agree, both options suck. To console myself, I decided to try and make my own graduation hood to wear on the 24th June, the day I was meant to graduate. It isn’t quite as photogenic as the real thing but on the plus side it’s a very easy craft.

You will need:

A pair of black trousers, a lot of pins, white material (I used my Dad’s long white socks but assuming your parents don’t wear sea boot hose you could use normal white socks, an old white blanket or sheet cut into strips, faux fur, bubble wrap or, in a pinch, paper). You could also sew yours together rather than pinning it to make it more secure but I needed to return the trousers and socks to my parents.

Everything you need 

How to do it:

Pin or sew the white material of your choice around the whole edge of the trousers. If confused about this just look at the pictures and it will be fairly obvious what you should do. Looking at a picture of an actual hood helped me as well. For reference, the waistband is going to be the back of the hood and the crotch is where the furry point will be (an unfortunately euphemistic sounding sentence). This bit took me around fifteen minutes and I stabbed myself with the pins about ten times but it was ultimately very easy.

Pinning the socks in place 

The next thing to do is to put on your gown and then drape your completed ‘hood’ over your shoulders. For added effect you can wear the actual graduation outfit (white shirt and trousers/skirt) and you could make the white bow tie out of another bit of material. Take the photos from quite a distance (5o metres or so) and use a blurring filter and people won’t be able to tell the difference!

The finished product vs. a real hood. I am also aware that in the picture on the right I am pulling the weirdest face but the hood really looked at its best there. (Picture of “official” hood from Cantab 12, Wikimedia Commons)

Obviously making this hood is nowhere near what we would have hoped for with our graduation but I have to say that it was a fun way to pass twenty minutes and I probably will have another go on graduation day and take some ‘good’ photos in it (from quite a distance).

All images author’s own unless otherwise specified