Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Dressing in the Dark: Fashion Faux Pas and other memorable moments

Have you ever gotten all the way to work and realized your underwear was on inside out? Welcome to my world. I used to consider myself fashionable, but now, after years of experience and long periods of reflection, I’ve come to a different conclusion.

Looking back there are moments in time I’m glad there were no photographers. And, others still where I’m sorry there were. Let’s take a trip through Amandaland.

I’ll start with a less offensive example to ease you into my past. While working a very formal awards banquet, one of my roles was to sit by the stage and walk the awards over to the Emcee. (Just call me Vanna). So, true to myself, I dressed the part. A long, black, strapless gown with just a bit of sparkle at the top was the outfit of the night. With my hair curled and cute jewelry, I was ready to go. I actually got a lot of compliments that evening so I thought I was pretty cool stuff. I was posing for pictures, and really feeling good about repeatedly waltzing across the stage in front of 350 people. One thing you need to know about me is my hair doesn’t “do” anything so I need heaps of hairspray to even attempt to do anything other than the long, flat Jan Brady look. I may have gone overboard that night. In retrospect, I look like something out of a 1992 Miss America Pageant. I could’ve written a country music tune, “A little less hairspray and a lot more hairbrush.”

More recently, I was wearing some new boots that were pretty cute. Black leather numbers that are sort of biker meets yuppie. I really like them (obvi). Since people are wearing boots with dresses these days and I decided to pair these with a dress for work one day. It was winter after all I wanted to keep my feet warm. And, for the most part, I think I was right. But perhaps where I strayed was that I chose to wear them inside the building. Upon further review it was more mini-dress-meets-moon-boots, than artsy-hipster.

Flowy cardigans. Whoever came up with these was seriously disturbed. However, until I saw myself in one, I thought they were the bee’s. There’s nothing like having spent the day with your board of directors, giving presentations, etc, laughing over some cocktails with them afterward, only to see a photo of yourself and discover you looked about a small as two pigs in the same pair of spandex tights. The best part was one of the women said, “Well, that’s not your greatest photo.” Thank you?

The very best example I can ever share with you came early on in my career-wear days. I had gotten a cute black and gold necklace/bracelet combo and wanted to pair it with a really basic outfit. It was a simple set, but unique, so I needed to wear something equally simple and just let it make a soft statement. Ask yourself what kind of statement a black leather strap with a gold buckle across your neck makes. It’s really awesome to know that I wore a dominatrix dog collar to work. And that it was caught on film.

I suppose you can say if you don’t take chances, you’ll just be boring. So, I guess I have that going for me.

1 comment:

  1. Yes but you were simply stylin' for 70s day in highschool. :D (I have that pic you know.)

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