This week for Five Take, our theme was a party dress. Perfectly timed because Claire, Becky and Gina were busy at Plus London and Rebecca was celebrating her birthday.
What about me? Oh, just at home… working.
At first I thought I could cop-out and post my outfit from Fatty Affair. Between the computer issues and work, I’ve slacked off on writing that post (obviously). And I already posted the images to the Facebook group, thus fulfilling promises made. Ha! But in all seriousness – photos are uploading to Flickr as I… type and the post will follow this one.
Back to the party dress. I decided to not go the easy, cheater route and started to think how the hell I was going to pull a party dress off on Super Bowl Sunday, when the highlights of my day were going to be cleaning the bathroom and work. I wanted to stay in my pajamas!
Dress/top – Collection by OneStopPlus, 34w
Vest – Apt. 9, Kohl’s, 3x
Jeggings – Old Navy, 28
Shoes – Bass, “Chrissie” via 6pm.com, 11M, $22
Bracelet – Necklace from Claire’s
I started wracking my brain for ideas and a dress to wear… Do I wear a party dress and dress it down? Go full party fance, and go to the grocery store at 3pm looking silly? The first won but pulling it off? Not so simple.
How do you dress down a party dress? Is it possible? I started to panic a little when all I could think of was adding a slouchy cardigan and/or jeggings. Which I guess would succeed in dressing down but not in a fashionable or creative way, which is part of the purpose for this challenge.
On my dress rack, I had this sequin number from OneStopPlus. I picked it up for a song and could never think of how to style it. I remember showing Chris and we both decided it looked like a sparkly night shirt. There was no shape whatsoever.
It was one of those things that I should have sent back but the return shipping wasn’t worth it. Today I thought… maybe I’d try it out. Now that’s a challenge!
Now, I have no idea why – but I decided to purchase this dress in a 34W. Maybe it was the only size left? Maybe I wanted it over-sized?
The catalog sizing almost always runs big for me, so I hope I wasn’t that dumb. Either way, I tried putting this baby on today… and yeah, so big it was comical. So big that belting it wasn’t going to help. So big that… well, I figured it was going to be a mess. I really meant to take a picture of the disaster but something distracted me – more about that later.
Remember I wanted to stay in my pajamas? What’s just as good as pajamas? Jeggings. Back during 30for30, I started belting my dresses into long tops and I thought it might work for this dress, despite the obvious size issues. Since my other ideas options involved fancy dresses paired with slouchy, casual cardigans I was desperate to make it work.
And also laughing at myself the whole time and fully prepared to do my grocery shopping and errands looking ridiculous. Now THAT is dedication. I even tweeted this:
A cardigan was out of the question because my favorite part of this mess was the arms. And it would hide lots of my shiny glory. So I grabbed the vest out of my closet (still with tags) and decided to wear that to break things up.
I didn’t end up belting the dress in the same way as 30for30 but used a belt to secure the extra fabric (lots, 10 inches?) below my boobs to make the dress look like a top. The result was a little bulky but not enough that anyone (but me) would notice.
As I got ready to leave, something scary happened – it started to grow on me. It started to look good! Nobody was more surprised than me because this outfit building started with me laughing at my reflection in the mirror each glance.
I threw on these super cute (and comfy) shoes, rolled up my pant legs (a la Rebecca), put my hair in a messy up-do, grabbed the “bracelet”, my purse and walked out the door.
Ridiculous or not.
Wondering what my distraction was? I left the car door open as I was taking pictures (smart move). This particular spot is on the side of a busy street and as I was taking pictures, I watched in horror as my knitting bag tipped over and stuff spilled out. Two balls of yarn for the sweater I’m about to start rolled into the gutter… one of which kept going into the storm drain.
Yup. That yarn is gone. I also pretty much needed all of the yarn I had, so knitting the sweater is going to be interesting. Good thing I’m making a cropped version! Thus (hopefully) needing less yarn.
Don’t forget to check out the party dresses of the other Five Take members!
Claire – A Monkey Fatshionista
Rebecca – The Plus Side of Me
Gina – Fat Fit Fine
Becky – The Ramblings of Mrs BeBe
Party dresses are something I wish I could wear more. They are things I rarely, if ever, buy because I have so few opportunities to wear them. But it would be really great to have a few that could do double duty on occasion…
Now a question for you – don’t worry, you can be honest. ;) How’d I do?
What is your favorite party dress? Would you ever attempt to dress it down?
