No Clothes Party

I’m not sure if it’s an English thing, a traveler’s thing, or just the people I happen to surround myself with but while away from home I’ve found a common theme of people dressing up in crazy outfits to go out. The first time I heard the term “fancy dress party” I assumed it was similar to our formal dances back in America. I was definitely wrong.


We discovered a slew of September birthdays among the Chateau staff and tried to come up with a way to celebrate together outside of the limited options on the mountain that everyone was bored of. This was supposed to be something special. We settled on a night out in Taupo with one stipulation- everyone had to come wearing an outfit made of something other than clothing. One group started early with a pub quiz at Mulligan’s and moved on to dancing at Element until the rest of the staff could get off work.


With scarce resources on our fingertips (not to mention a limited time frame for those of us racing to catch at least last call after work) most people ended up in variations of bin bags, also known as can liners or trash bags to us "Yanks" (On a side note, when it was first suggested I kept thinking that people were suggesting we wear “bean bags”… got to love the English language barrier!). I grabbed the one thing in my room that wasn’t clothing and would still cover me, a towel, tied a tapestry around my head and called it a night.

One of the greatest things about the night was that all of us, whether we worked late or had to be up early, put in the effort to make an appearance. I’m not sure if it was the months that we had worked together or the fact that we all looked ridiculous, but any bonds that were formed felt cemented that night. Blood may be thicker than water, but garbage bags can definitely hold their own.