What I wore this week: an updated party dress
You get to a point when the parties you go to just aren’t as hot as they used to be. Literally, I mean. Parties are still, on occasion, fairly badly behaved, but they are very rarely sweaty. I suspect the wooden floorboards we spent most of our 30s stripping and painting and fussing over lose heat something rotten compared with those nice mouldy, fuzzy carpets we had in the rented accommodation of old. Also, the days of every guest turning up with 10 randoms tagging along are over, and you start losing good people to the dreaded babysitter problem. There is less dancing on tables, and more sitting down at them and eating.
What’s not to love? Nice food and somewhere to sit down, and actual ice and lemon in your gin and tonic. It’s all good, and I’m all for it; I just need to adjust my wardrobe.
Look up “party dress” on any online boutique and you will be inundated with strapless, strappy or sleeveless frocks. And you just know you’ll turn up and the hostess will be in some annoyingly fabulous piece of embellished cashmere, with the garden door open so people can nip outside for a grand-openings-and-race-days sneaky cigarette, and you’ll be absolutely freezing. And no, before you ask, you absolutely cannot take a cardie with you – we’re not that past it, thank you very much.
What I need – which is lovely, because it means relatively guilt-free shopping – is more long‑sleeved party dresses, like this one. Sleeves-for-parties are best in night-time fabrics: lace is pleasingly Valentino; velvet is a bit Saint Laurent. But jersey will do fine, at a pinch, and you can offset the simplicity of a solid black sleeve with a stack of bracelets or a cracking cocktail ring.
What you need might be a long-sleeved party dress, or it might be something totally different. The point is to figure out where your life and your clothes have got out of sync, and retune your wardrobe accordingly. Maybe you are working from home, but still in office clothes; maybe you have moved too far out to get cabs home, so need a public-transport-friendly party look. Never mind fashion: your wardrobe needs to be up-to-date with your life. Even if that means it has to grow up.
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