All-Girls' College Says No To Skimpy Nighties

Coming down to breakfast in your night wear shows you really feel at home. But students of St Hilda's college at Oxford University have been ordered to dress properly for breakfast because it may show too much skin.

Some girls at the college were arriving for their morning breakfast wearing skimpy nightgowns. They said that with no men in the all-female halls of residence, there was no need for dressing up.

But the kitchen staff, mainly made up of men, hardly knew where to look so the college has now banned the comfortable night wear.

The order to cover up has not gone down well with students who claim breakfasting in their nightclothes is one of the privileges of studying at an all-girls college.

Arielle Goodley, a 20-year-old student received a written warning for wearing a lacy nightie and skimpy dressing gown after the ban was imposed.

"Back at home we can go to breakfast wearing whatever we like. You can wander around in whatever clothes you choose and no one bats an eyelid", says, another student, Miss Goodley. "Surely one of the benefits of not having men around is that we can turn up for breakfast wearing whatever we want. They are claiming that it makes the young male serving staff uncomfortable, but we know that's not true. Whenever we've asked the men themselves, they say it doesn't bother them at all. In reality it's the older women working there who seem to be making a fuss".

She is the latest to receive a sternly-worded letter from college dean advising her to 'dress appropriately' for breakfast. "My nightie was hardly revealing", she insisted. "I mean, it wasn't buttoned up to the neck but it wasn't that bad".

Goodley admitted some of the students had pushed the boundaries to see how skimpy outfits could get, with one girl who is said to have arrived wearing so little that fellow students were 'able to see everything', but added "No one's gone to breakfast naked yet".

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