The first week of Cambridge life goes by in a haze – a haze that within two days sees you trussed up in a billowing gown, ready to swan past towering gothic architecture, over crenelated bridges, and into a great hall to revel in your own majesty and eat things you couldn’t previously pronounce. What first appears a film set (Harry Potter is the obvious reference) with lashings of CGI quickly fades into normality. A dash to Sainsbury’s before hall to grab wine in your gown meets not with the incredulous stares you would attract back home, but indifference – or at best a knowing nod of sympathy. Not only do people not notice your strange attire, but you find that you yourself cease to notice certain anomalies. That the cyclists do not wear streamlined Lycra, but are more often found in tweed or corduroy; that a swarm of ten-year-olds in white surplices appears commonplace; and that the multi-coloured array of blazers are not worn for their designer labels but as a badge of honour of organised alcohol consumption. Of all of these phenomena, the gown is the most interesting because it is paradoxical: it hides your identity as you blur into a mass of Cambridge students, but when you are alone it marks you as different. To an alien onlooker, the gown means nothing – it is usually referred to as a “cloak” – but to a knowing insider, it denotes your degree level, your university, even your college.

Cambridge fashion is at times more glamorous than most universities, but notwithstanding one-of-a-kind May Ball dresses, the majority of days necessitate comfort and warmth (not two words that often grace the pages of fashion magazines). Your money isn’t saved to buy the next It-bag or pair of shoes: a bike becomes your most coveted accessory of choice. Whatever your first impression might be of Cambridge, the dramatic costumes that first excite and bewilder form a small percentage of the average outfit. When making wardrobe choices students tend to favour practicality: a coat that gets you to lectures through the almost-inevitable rain, a shabby second-hand bike that doesn’t get stolen within the first week, and a bag both large enough to fit all your books as you traipse from library to library, and comfortable enough not to cripple you. Anything else can wait for the summer.