On Wednesdays we wear…a morphe suit, banana socks and rainbow wig?

Posted on 10 July, 2019

Would you wear an outfit picked by your Facebook friends?

What about if that outfit included a Hawaiian skirt, full morph suit, telly tubby antenna, mullet wig, and firefighting goggles?

If you happen to have spotted Katie Fairfax out and about on a Wednesday recently, you probably did a double take.

For the past month, 21-year-old Katie, an Agricultural Business Management student at Wagga University, has been getting up on Wednesday mornings, dressing in whatever her Facebook friends have decided, and going about her normal business.

Katie is not trying to start a new fashion trend with her crazy outfits but was rather doing a weekly ‘wardrobe challenge’ to raise money for the leukaemia foundation.

She’ll be donating the money along with her long hair when she completes the greatest shave on Friday 19 July with a group of friends from uni.

She’s looking forward to rocking a shaved head and is proud that the wig her hair makes will help someone who is going through a difficult time in some small way.

The ‘wardrobe challenge’ was born when Katie realised the date of the shave was fast approaching and her fundraising efforts had not been as successful as she would have liked.

She knew she’d regret not doing everything she possibly could to reach her target amount of $1500 and decided to do something a bit outrageous and fun to get people’s attention.

Her expansive (and eclectic) dress up collection from years of school sporting carnivals, birthday parties, and uni events ticked the ‘outrageous’ and ‘fun’ boxes perfectly.

At the beginning of every week for the past month, Katie put together a list of crazy clothes and posted it to her Facebook and Instagram, along with a link to her fundraising page.

Each item was given a price, and Katie encouraged people to choose her Wednesday outfit by donating the cost of the item and commenting the name of the item on the post.

Then Katie dressed up in all the items that were ‘purchased’ and live-streamed different parts of her day on Facebook. People often didn’t believe that she would go out in public – but she absolutely did.

She lived each Wednesday like she normally would: out for coffee with friends, to uni tutorials, and grocery shopping.

Katie Fairfax.

She even went to a cocktail party that happened to be on a Wednesday night decked out in fairy wings, a morph suit, green tutu, and nana slippers! Katie maintains that she was by far the comfiest person there.

Over the past month, Katie has been surprised and delighted by the support she’s received from her Facebook and uni friends.

She has smashed her original goal of $1500 and raised it to $2000 which she hopes to reach in the next few weeks. Katie has one more wardrobe challenge happening today, 10 July, and promises it will be bigger and better than ever.

Considering she’s already spent an entire Wednesday wearing flippers and green sideburns, everyone will be watching to see how she ups the stakes.

By thinking outside the box in a situation where she really has nothing to lose and everything to gain, Katie has raised significant money for the leukaemia foundation.

It’s a reminder to not take things so seriously all the time, to use your imagination and break through people’s social media feeds, and to maybe not let your Facebook friends choose your outfit for you…

A little creativity and a little bit more confidence go a very long way.

You can help Katie raise even more funds for the Leukaemia Foundation via her Greatest Shave Fundraising page or via Facebook.