How to dress memorably
A masterclass of sorts...
This week’s column is free. I hope you enjoy it. By the way, if you do enjoy what I make over here I would love it if you would consider becoming an annual subscriber this year. The majority of writing, videos and community all live behind the paywall and I’d love you to come on over to get to know me a bit better. And if money is tight, a ‘share’ of this post or even a little ‘like’ will also go a long way to helping Things Worth Knowing and me.
Who won the ‘dress parade’ at this week’s inauguration? The answer depends on how you define successful ‘event’ dressing.
Was it Melania in the world’s sharpest dress coat, Al Capone-style hat and Trump Tower-heels? Or maybe Jill Biden got it spot on, colour drenching herself in Quality Street purple and a rictus smile. (Keep it together Jill, keep it together…)
Perhaps you think the honours go to Ivanka in that forest-green 1930’s ensemble, despite the fact the entire Internet is trying to convince you it looked like something rifled from The Handmade Tale’s costume department. (For the record, I thought it looked far more like something left over from an Ian MKewan adaptation, which is a rather good thing in my opinion.)
Of course the media did what it always does and used the inauguration as a lazy excuse to do one giant fashion roast on every woman who attended. This is not new. Demonising the wearer through the clothes they choose to put on is standard fare, as demonstrated by the moral outrage poured upon Lauren Sanchez for wearing a peach-coloured Dolce and Gabbana dress that has henceforth been nicknamed ‘the naked dress.’ (Sorry, I just didn’t see it….)
My point is this: occasion dressing fills most women with horror. After all, these are clothes riddled with hidden messages and codes of conducts - what length is appropriate? Is sheer unsuitable? Is a plunging neckline too much? These are clothes that, whether you like it or not, send out a semaphore to the world about who you think you are - Lauren Sanchez is a sex kitten; Ivanka is a patrician ice maiden, Melania is a no shit-taking hard ass.
Occassion dressing fills almost every woman I know with instant sartorial imposter syndrome. How do I know this? Because that was me ten days ago when I was summoned to Windsor Castle to meet the king.
It all started back in the summer of 2024 when a small note dropped through the letter box informing me that I was to be made an MBE for my services to media. This was very nice. It was also very useful in explaining to my then 83-year old father, who still had hopes I’d one day become a doctor, what I’d been doing with my life for the last 25 years.
It was also, terrifying.
Attendees are to wear military uniform or a three piece suit for men, read the invite. And a hat (no fascinators) and a dress or suit (knee-length) for women. (I think they put it a bit better than this but you get the idea.)
I have dressed for many fancy occasions in my life: the fashion front row, the occasional party thrown at Number 10, dinners with celebrities, and even a random invitation to Karl Lagerfeld’s memorial at The Grand Palais in Paris. But nothing like this. ( By the way, rule of thumb: dress down to meet celebrities, dress up to meet politicians).
For the record, I am not a formal dresser. I own one tuxedo and two ‘occasion’ dresses - the occasion generally meaning a summer picnic or someone’s 50th birthday party. I also no longer own any ritzy heels, having sold most of them off when I started working from home and caring about things like bunions and plantar fasciitis. As for hats…don’t be ridiculous.
So where does one start? The internet, of course.
I spent weeks, and nights, and very very early mornings, doom scrolling through every knee length outfit imaginable. There was the Dries Van Noten shirt dress I almost bought until I discovered it had what amounted to one arm. There was a very simple floor length dress from Me & Em in deepest magenta, until I realised I hated magenta. And finally, in utter desperation I almost splurged half my savings on a stupidly expensive bronze dress and matching hat that on reflection made me look like Colonel Gaddafi.
Do you really want to buy an outfit from the internet to wear for one of the most memorable days of your life, a friend said in passing.
She was right. And so I took a deep breath, composed myself then went and sat it out for three whole months.
Because what even counts as memorable dressing, I thought to myself. Does memorable mean standing out? Is a memorable outfit one that makes you feel a certain way? For a dress to be memorable does it mean trying something new- a bold new colour, say? Or a new hemline? Is memorable dressing about being memorable for you, the wearer. Or for the audience around you?
And so I started to create a secret Pinterest board of ‘memorable’ outfits stylish women had worn though the ages. These were dresses and outfits that had both stood the test of the time and the ire of the internet
There was Audrey Hepburn in Charade who wore lots of elegant dress coats and cute little pillbox hats. Also Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde who could have gone to the palace in any one of those outfits. There was Jackie Kennedy, whose trademark shift dresses, block heels and bird cage hats always hit the sweet spot of ‘stylishly formal’. And I have always thought Queen Letizia of Spain gets in right. Princess Margaret too, in her heyday. Finally there was Tilda ‘the human coat hanger’ Swindon, who makes everything from a tweed waistcoat to a yellow balloon pants look like art, but who, I decided in the end, was far too outre for me.
This was a very useful exercise. Usually I just want to look smart-ish. Or cool-ish. Or at the very least ‘pulled together’. But it’s too vague an aspiration to land on something that is truly memorable.
Seeing these images allowed me to stop and think about the image I wanted to project. And so I alighted on this: elegant not showy. A quiet nod to the sixties if possible. A hat that whispered rather than shouted. Shoes that felt sensible not sexy.I wanted to wear a British designer too. And maybe a colour. Though black always make me feel safe and a bit under the radar, which is a feeling I enjoy. And feelings count when dressing for big occasions.
As it happens the hat was the easiest bit. Yes, I would have loved a Stephen Jones number (too expensive) and though my gorgeous new friend fashion writer
offered to lend me any one of hers, wearing someone else’s hat for such a special day didn’t feel quite right.In the end I ended up on the doorstep on Maison Michel (they are French, I know…) who do beautiful little ‘stealth’ hats. The minute I walked through the doors of their teeny Conduit Street store I saw my hat: a small, black beret-meets-pillbox hat with a tiny birdcage veil. It fitted. I exhaled. Handed over my credit card and we were done.
Next the shoes. I had kept back a pair of old Manalo Blaknik heels that I’d bought at a sample sales years ago. They were on the sensible side of things in black suede and with a small kitten heel. I loved the idea of wearing something familiar to a big, scary event- something I knew would not let me down. And so they also made the grade.
Finally I wanted to take something deeply personal with me. I had a beautiful pair of pave diamond drop earrings that I had scrimped and saved to buy for my wedding day back in 2011 and hadn’t worn since. How lovely, I thought, to rewear something that had been with me on one of the most special days of my life.
I was almost done…apart from one crucial thing: the dress.
That’s when I remembered Jane Atelier.
This brand is a bit of a secret amongst certain circles. Many moons ago it used to be called Goat and sold the most delicious cashmere and woollen separates. (I used to own a beautiful sky-blue Goat cashmere cardigan that I wore to almost every job interview in my twenties). But a few years back the founder, Jane Lewis, herself one of London’s most stylish women, repackaged it up as Jane Atelier and started making beautiful, very understated dresses and suits that felt deeply couture in the way they were crafted.
I have always wanted a Jane Atelier dress. I have one of her maxi skirts and people always moon after it when I wear it. Now, I decided was the time for a dress.
I’m lucky. I have met Jane before who very kindly allowed me to come over to her atelier in west London to try on a few dresses I’d spied on the website.
There was a knee-length dress with a beautiful ruffled collar and cuffs called The Vermont, which felt very old school Yves Saint Laurent. There were fit and flare dresses with little peaked shoulders that reminded me of a vintage Ossie Clark dress I once owned and wore to collect my first ever journalism award. There was a tweedy black dress coat which felt very Jackie Kennedy-at-JFK’s-funeral, and a simple black shift dress with a bow by the throat that felt like something Twiggy might have worn on the cover of Vogue in 1965.
So off I went. Except there were three major problems.
I was no longer the dress size I thought I was. The combination of Christmas and eating away my grief (affectionately referred to as ‘grief bacon’ in Germany which I sort of love) meant almost every dress I had my eye on was just fractionally too tight.
Two of the key dresses I had my eye on had not yet arrived from the warehouse
It was the day before the ceremony because I am very last minute like that.
I was what is affectionately called screwed.
Don’t worry, soothed the lovely woman called Alex at the Atelier. I have an idea.
And then she presented me with something I would never dreamed of wearing: a floaty, crepe dress with a small keyhole just above the breast bone and in a colour I suppose you would call subtle blackcurrant.
I’m not sure about purple, I said. Or the style. Or the keyhole.
Just try it, she said knowingly.
This was not a dress on my radar at all. For reasons unbeknownst to me I had taken against purple. And I worried a cleavage-exposing keyhole would make me look like a lusty milkmaid. But…it fitted. Like a second skin. It made my stomach vanish. It was kind to my hips. It felt like I was kind of wearing nothing at all because it was light and floaty and hit my calves at the exact point I had decided was the most flattering point on my entire body.
What’s more the keyhole didn’t hit my cleavage at all, but instead rested on my breast bone- a lovely little swatch of skin usually spared the ravages of sun damage.
As for the colour, it was incredible. If purple is a spectrum- and it is- this was inky purple. Damson purple. This was a purple closer to black than it was the Quality Street purple of my sartorial nightmares. It was beautiful.
And so the next morning when I rose with the birds I felt no nerves, no panic, and certainly no imposter syndrome. Instead, when I placed on my hat, clipped on the earrings I had worn many years before as a 30-something bride, slipped into my shoes and zipped up a dress I had ruthlessly dismissed, I felt seen. Not by others, but by me. This was who I felt I was. This was memorable to me. And frankly, that’s all that counts.
Beautiful. And congratulations 🩷
Farrah it’s perfect! Just perfect. Adore the shoes too! Hope you had a wonderful day x