Current situation; sitting in the hairdressers looking like an ogre with foils in my hair. A bit like that meme that did the rounds not so long ago. You know the one I mean right? Sexy babes.
Tonight I’m off to an awards evening with my old work gang where we’ve been shortlisted for some campaigns we ran last year. Considering I don’t work there anymore, it makes my heart swell a little bit that I’d even get an invite. Such cuties.
So we’re no strangers to these types of awards evenings. (We’ve previously won two awards before, don’t you know). We know the drill. We know about the long minibus journey into London where we’ll play our awards evening playlist and drink too many ‘tinnies’ (I said they were an ace bunch of people, not classy lols). We know the dinner’s always a bit naff and the awards itself is a bit dry. We know the disco at the end is all a bit twee. But tbh the two things that I look forward to the most are; getting dressed up all proper like and hanging out with these lovely lot, celebrating all the hard work from the past year. The winning would be a bonus but I could take it or leave it.
So about my outfit tonight. I had put some money aside to go out and buy a brand new dress, but I kinda spent it by accident, as you do. I went on a big ol’ Zara spend up for day-to-day clothes instead (read about the ruffle shirt here). So I resorted to plan number two; raid my mum’s wardrobe. The queen of black tie.
It does seem awfully silly to go out and buy a brand new black tie outfit when my mum has a whole stock wardrobe of them. She chose this outfit for me, as she always does when I go round there with my tail between my legs asking her to get me out of a clothes conundrum.
So here’s a super comfy Coast dress, with silver heels and a ‘to-die-for’ silver clutch. I’d quite like to keep the clutch. Would she notice it missing from the collection? Probably.
Off to an awards ceremony soon? Here’s some top tips on dressing for this occasion:
- Do go classic. Don’t mean to put a dampener on things hun, but none of us are Lady Gaga here. And there’s a time and a place to wear a see-through plastic dress, and this awards evening isn’t it. Find yourself something that says classic style. Team it with some killer heels & clutch combo and you’re onto a winner.
- Do consider the length of your dress. Personally, I think black-tie evening wear should always either be a full length dress or a midi kinda of style. Baaaaasically, nothing too short. It’s a formal event and your dress should reflect this.
- Do wear something that allows for dinner bloat. And wine bloat. You ladies know what I’m chatting about yeah. Nothing worse than wearing a body con dress then realising you cannot eat dessert because you might just pop halfway through the chocolate brownie. I mean that just sucks (and what a waste of chocolate brownie).
- Don’t wear white. Because you will spill your dinner down it. And do you know what’s not very fun? Going on stage in front of a zillion people with gravy down your front. So y’know, either get really good with a napkin bib or just avoid a white dress, fullstop.
- Don’t ever, ever dress down. There’s a reason the invitation states black tie – don’t ignore it. You’ll only end up feeling under dressed (maybe even a worse fate than gravy down the dress IDK). I’m not saying wear something you feel super uncomfortable in, but if you’re not sporting sequins/embellishments/sparkly shoes/red lippie/feathers/bare legs then maybe you need to add a bit of ‘va-va-voom’ to your outfit. Come on, it’s not often you get to go all out – flippin’ embrace it.
- Do practice your winning/losing face. Gotta cover all bases babes.
So if you ever find yourself with an invitation to a black tie awards evening, I hope you find these top tips useful. And if you’re really stuck, drop me a message. I love to personal shop for people.
Hope your bank holiday weekends have been dreamy.
[UPDATE: despite the whole work gang getting it spot on with the black tie dress code & looking proper classy, we did not win the award we were shortlisted for. I mean, we knew this from the moment we found out we were on the furthest table from the stage; doh. But you know what? It was a fab opportunity to celebrate all the amazeballs things we did last year. And they’ll always be a top team in my mind. Oh did I mention Jimmy Car was the presenter? That was ace too.]
