My guess is that since your friend wasn't Greek at UGA, she's just not able to see it like you or I can. At Georgia, the sororities are very competitive with each other and it's important that every sister look her best. You never want to be the sorority with the sister who is memorable to PNMs because she:
- wore a dress two sizes too large or too small
- toppled over in too-high heels
- you get the idea
I am of the opinion that the reason chapters can be very "dictatorial" about fashion is that they don't want to leave any room for a sister who is not the most fashion-conscious to not put her best foot forward. I don't see it as a problem, really, but I was there and saw FR at UGA firsthand.

This will be my daughter's second time on the other side of rush and we have to get almost all different stuff than last year...which is so irritating. Frankly, it would be a heckuva lot easier if panhellenic would let them wear identical stuff, then somebody could just order it for everybody instead of some 21 year old girl (who refuses to get input from anybody else) coming up with random outfits that half the time cannot be found in stores (and I live in Atlanta--it's not like we don't have good shopping here!) The main problem with my daughter's list is that everything has to be solid and in colors that aren't currently the most popular. Last year my daughter needed a solid pastel strapless or spaghetti strap sundress and we could not find one anywhere--thought I was going to have to dust off the sewing machine :eek: until she finally found one....IN FRANCE. Now if she was looking for white last year, she would've been fine, but plain pastel was nowhere to be seen.

Grrrrr from the mother side. I'd rather give the sorority $300-$400 and have them buy it than spend countless hours shopping or on the internet looking for the holy grail of sundresses in a specific style and color.

I think I said something similar in the old thread: bulk ordering might end up cheaper. (Of course it would depend on how many of the items that girl owned already.)

Do they switch it around every year, NUBlue&blue, or did you happen to hit a year where they changed everything up?

(I think my friend's daughter's list is pretty similar to what the group wore last year, but I don't really know. Since she's a new member, she didn't have it already.)

I used to think the same thing about lists like that and chapters dressing all alike. Then after reading a couple of threads on here and thinking about the mechanics of 1) getting 180 women to agree on what to wear 2) trusting the fashion sense of 180 women, some of whom you don't know terribly well, instructing everyone to get "editor pant #136 in dove gray from Express" sounds like a really good idea. :)

Actually, the list isn't even that specific. It would just say "gray pants." But it does specify things like type of shoe, jewelry, etc.

And my guess with type of jewelry that it's something like "pearls" where the girls can purchase good-looking fakes from Claire's for $15 and some girls may get white and some may get pink, etc., not "Everyone must wear Tiffany's."

Yep.

I do have to say though that the items weren't things everyone would be likely to already have in her closet, but they won't be hard to find or even necessarily expensive.

i don't think that it has anything to do with the stray sequin or bead being shed in the carpet, more that it is a more specific way for the pnms to understand the appropriate dress for pref. rounds. i have heard of pnms showing up in full blown prom regalia; hair, jewelry and long dress. now, imagine how awful they feel when they arrive and see how overdressed they are.

we are fairly specific as to what the chapter i advise wears, in that the recruitment vp decides the dress for each round ;we say dark jeans, with (insert color) strappy heeled sandals and polo style shirt that the chapter is ordering. we don't specify the make. we advisors even have dress checks before recruitment to make sure everyone is on the same page. we ask that noone remove tags and that they girls hold on to their receipts until after dress check-luckily, we have not had to ask anyone to return anything(yet).

Yup, and I know of more than one instance where the outfit she showed up in on rush day was NOT the outfit that passed dress checks.

Really? Why would someone do that? If you already had the approved outfit what would make someone change?

Because they think they can get away with it. Needless to say, usually it only causes more drama (and in the worst case, a nice helping of fines!)

They think their own taste is that much better than what the chapter asked them to wear?

Because they have no respect for the importance of looks in recruitment. I think that's the only possible explanation.

What I hate is when a girl has a dress approved, loses 10 lbs, and doesn't get it altered before recruitment. The excuse? "But the outfit was approved as is." Yes, but we didn't know you would go from a 6 to a 4 over the summer. The assumption was that the dress would continue to FIT. I'm sure the exact same problem happens in the opposite direction... a girl might have a dress approved, gain some weight, and not think to have a new dress approved or have the dress taken out.

It's not just what you wear, it's how it looks on you, too. In fact, it's mostly how it looks on you.

[I know I sound so MEAN talking about fashion and recruitment, but one of my biggest recruitment pet peeves is the group of people who don't understand or take it seriously.]

I think sisters with that attitude generally don't consider the fact that the PNMs are going to be walking into a big group of women that they don't know. The coordinated outfits help the PNMs to visually distinguish between chapter members and other PNMs.

Of course it would be offensive if you were being dictated what to wear every day of the school year. But how difficult is it to suck it up for a week (or less) of formal recruitment?