Outfit Search

Recently, I had an important dinner with a semi-famous movie star and five of my friends. Naturally I wanted to look fabulous, but as is the running theme here, I am usually broke or one dinner with a movie star away from it. So I went through a crisis of throwing my clothes off their hangers and all over my chair and bed, trying to snag some inspiration about what to recycle and wear. Nada. Besides my budget and anxiety about looking good for this night, I was further hindered by the fact that I had recently bought some amazing shoes on a trip to London, and wanted to give them their maiden voyage on this night. And let me tell you from experience, building an outfit from the shoes up is terrible.
I've seen many a good woman and a good outfit go down in flames because of this. (Especially if those shoes are a particular shade of red and you are of an era where shoes and belts and purses must match, and that color should preferably be present somewhere in either your jewelry or outfit somewhere and thus, when you start with the red shoes, finding -exact- shades of red for all the other items is nearly impossible, despite an unlimited budget, I'm looking at you, Grandma M!) Though I knew better, of course, I was adamant about wearing the incredible shoes with the incredible dinner company. (I imagined he would love my shoes and we'd become bff and he'd call me every night and tell me about his day and how his movie is going and gossip about his famous friends until 3 in the morning, but it all pivoted on the damn shoes!)

But here I will share my search with the hope that it will prevent other frugal, obstinate girls from winding up in the same position, which is to say, spending hours trying on clothes and running in and out of the same affordable stores that lie between work/school and home.

So here are the culprit shoes (as seen in the user pic above, kind of):


First I tried an adorable (and on sale!) I.N.C. skirt dressed down with a (spiderman)layered tshirt so that I would look playful, and like I wasn't trying too hard, but it was vetoed vehemently by my wise friends:


And then I tried (among many un-photographable-or-mentionable ensembles) the following, going for simplicity rather than casualness:


But of course this seemed way too casual and not at all sexy- in fact, the words 'cheating' and 'safe' came to mind, so I threw in some sexy and some color with great, timid hope:


As we can all concede, this was not our best arrangement either. So at last I went to the store onemoretime and ran around and succombed to the shoe-accentuating safe black and white idea (though I had tried to challenge myself, I swear!) and I managed to wind up with this:


I felt that it went over very well. The man I went out with may not be calling me every night, but the first thing he said about/to me was: "Wow. Your shoes." And hell if that doesn't count for something! I would definitely wear it all again.

But here's the real bugger of the thing... I have a dinner cruise in two Saturdays, it is semi-dress attire, and... I feel I must wear those shoes again for the occasion! But a handful of my friends overlap attending the events, so of course I can't wear the same exact outfit! Oy, here we go all over again... but I will keep you posted!