Black-Tie Dressing, or “I Have Nothing to Wear”

Solving a very festive outfit crisis

As soon as I posted my last post about how I am buying nothing during Black Friday, I realised I have a black-tie gala event to attend - and not really any black-tie options.

I also realised that for evening dresses, I love a very particular silhouette: covered shoulders, relaxed and closed on the bust, and fitted at the high waist. I had one dress like that from Raey, but at this point it’s a bit too small for me.

Raey dress, Aeyde shoes, Reserved bag - all old

I was recommended to check a Lithuanian brand Undress and found this silhouette there - the perfect amount of coverage, great for my body type, and at an okay-ish price point. Since I almost never find dresses in this shape, I tried it out in both burgundy and black, and settled on burgundy.

(By the way, after the event I discovered that this pure silk dress from Róhe was also on sale - I would have seriously considered it if I had noticed beforehand.)

Tori dress in black and burgundy by Undress.

The dress is quite closed, so I was thinking about how to style it and took inspiration from Pinterest.

Source: Pinterest

Burgundy is not trivial to style (even Amy said so in one of her stories) - it’s a serious colour, and you have to play with it to avoid looking too mature. From the images above, the gold accessories immediately caught my attention, and after some searching I found these beautiful gold shoes from Massimo Dutti. I fell in love with them immediately and bought them.

Now the only question was: what to do about the bag? I tried the bags I already had and then experimented with colours by putting different tops over a bag to simulate how they’d look with the burgundy.

My usual go-to LK Bennett gold clutch (similar) was off the table immediately, as its metallic hue clashed with the gold shoes. The COS satin bag was fine but still not convincing. I tested various colours by draping my tops over a bag to see how they played with the dress.

I briefly considered turning my Varnelis tote into a clutch (and it almost worked if I didn’t need to put anything inside), but ultimately decided it was a bit too creative -even for me - and not very practical, although I loved the colour combination.

I settled on light purple - I loved it the most when trying things out. Since I had already spent quite a bit, I didn’t want anything expensive, so I ordered three bags from Vinted for €10 each. I thought it would be useful to have some colours to play with, so I got light purple, green, and greenish-blue.

In reality, the bags do look like they cost €10, and their texture didn’t really work with either the dress or the shoes. I also experimented with yellow tights - last year I learned that burgundy, yellow, and silver is an amazing combination. But I found that for statement tights, the dress really needs to be shorter, and when I tried lifting it, it didn’t look as elegant as I expected.

The photos above are actually from after the event, because the cheap bags didn’t arrive on time. On the day, I ended up going with the COS satin bag.

I chose burgundy tights to contrast with the golden shoes, but I’m still not 100% sure it was the right decision. A full metallic statement boot, like the Tibi silver boot, would probably have been better. However, I still felt great and really festive - and had an amazing gala - so I’d say the dress and the outfit was a success!

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