On Thursday mornings, a flood of coeds sporting suits, lemon pepper steppers and tidy dresses with heels arrive on the campus of Stillman College, an HBCU in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, early for chapel.

Students across campus have designated today Professional Dress Thursdays, where wearing business attire is the norm and for some students, like senior Bryant Howell, it’s become their favorite way to dress.

“When I wear professional clothes on Thursdays, I get that sense of empowerment when I’m wearing a suit and a tie,” Howell told Reckon.

Stillman and other HBCUs throughout the country uplift iconic fashion trends on their campuses with designated days to unify in style. In North Carolina, for example, students at HBCU campuses there created Telfar Tuesday. Other campuses designate Durag Day for students to show off their dopest head coverings.

As students return to colleges and universities nationwide, social media has increasingly upped the pressure on undergrads to be fashion-forward. TikTok in particular has become a kind of digital runway, where students reveal the fresh outfits and kicks they plan to show off on the yard. At HBCUs in particular, dressing to impress might as well be its own intercollegiate sporting event.

Of course, color coordinating or dressing to a theme isn’t a new concept for Black folks and has always been a tradition that exists outside of HBCU culture. All-white parties, the distinctive colors of Divine Nine organizations and even matching church hats to dresses, have come to represent a celebration, sacral practice, political resistance and statement-making.

The style of HBCU students at Stillman not only birthed Professional Dress Thursdays, but also Magnolia Mondays, newly added to encourage students’ wearing business casual in honor of the college’s recently fallen 200-year-old magnolia tree, and Fresh-fit Fridays, a day dedicated to showing off students’ most trendy lifestyle ensembles.

“There is a lot of fashion influence going around campus, so when you know everybody else is going to dress up, it makes you want to put on a little something too,” Howell said.

Through Stillman’s designated days to showcase students’ style, Howell found community and friends on campus. After coming to college to play basketball and later experiencing a knee injury his freshman year, Howell focused on healing and studying, which left little time to make friends or get out of his room.

Getting into his own style and exploring his identity on-campus is what Howell said, “completely took his student life on a 180 as far as networking and friendships.”

Many incoming students, including Howell’s freshman year, often express the importance of fitting into HBCU life by tapping into the most culturally popular moments of Blackness to find friends or be accepted.

Recently HBCU Buzz reshared a satire video on Instagram reflecting how upcoming and current students at times feel they have to fit in or join the collective at HBCUs by purchasing Telfar bags, learning how to Swag Surf or remembering the lyrics to Dreams and Nightmares by Meek Mill – popular touchstones of Black culture but not necessarily universal to the Black experience.

Black folks are not a monolith and the Black experience at HBCUs varies and isn’t dependent upon how students dress, dance or repeat song lyrics.

“Upcoming students should just be yourself and get to know the right people,” Howell said.

“Find the people that have your best interest at heart and always be open to going towards a group of people that you wouldn’t traditionally hang out with because a lot of times those end up being some of your best friends.”

The Black experience at Stillman is heavily entrenched in church culture. Specifically, its legacy as a private Presbyterian HBCU, makes the wearing of suits and dresses less a fashion trend for the almost 800 enrolled students on campus than a hallowed tradition.

Professional Dress Thursdays are an avenue leading students to the on-campus chapel at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church and then to the cafeteria after service for their weekly fried chicken day.

“There are usually more people on campus on Thursdays, faculty included, because people show up for fried chicken on Thursdays and church. You will see almost every athletic team there because their coaches require them to go (to) chapel,” Howell told Reckon.