My old university had a strong tradition of dressing up. In fact anything short of full Rocky Horror style drag was seen as quite a poor effort.
So I got myself some Immac/Veet, false eyelashes, false nails, a great wig and the obligatory feather boa... the works. All good fun (well not the false nails, but that's another story...).
Three years later I moved to a new university. My department held a fancy dress welcome do. Without hesitation I got dragged up to meet my fellow PhD students and faculty. Turned out no one else bothered with more than the odd pair of devil horns.
Thankfully I was fairly unrecognisable in drag.
Five years later it still makes me cringe.