Opting Out!

Riddle me this: why is it that we ladies find it so horrifying to wear the same 'special occasion outfit' too many times? These pieces cost much more than things we wear on a daily basis, and yet we never get our 'money per wear' value from them. For example: I bought a classic black dress for my hen's night -- this means most of my female friends have seen it. I've since worn it to the closing night of my husband's show, and since most of his work colleagues were slightly tipsy when they saw me in it...I felt confident enough to wear it again to the Helpmann Awards without too much embarrassment. But that lovely outfit is pretty much dead now. I'll need to wait at least a few years before I can resurrect it. Money down the drain, people!

I have 3 weddings and an Opening Night to attend in the not too distant future and I am distraught when I think of how much cash I'll need to spend to attend these events in different clothes. I know what you're thinking: buy one outfit and make it do all four. But there are too many of the same people attending most of the occasions to facilitate such a coup. I could rent a dress from one of those designer hire places, but that still ain't cheap - and what if I spill some red wine on it? My husband suggested I wear that 'nice black dress' to his Opening Night and the thought of having to drag it out again made me burst into tears. The poor fella can't possibly understand my reaction -- he has one amazing suit that he wears everywhere. Problem solved.

We could go deeper on this. Naomi Wolf suggested 19 years ago in her manifesto The Beauty Myth that while we ladies may indeed achieve equal pay for equal work at some point, we will never be truly equal while we spend that extra money on maintaining our appearance. In the spirit of this idea, I've decided to experiment with NOT buying new outfits for all of these events. I'm going on the scrounge instead. One of my bridesmaids is mailing me her dress from our wedding for this weekend, and I'm hoping that it will fit. That means the Opening Night is covered. As for the three weddings - I'm hoping to establish some sort of Girlfriend's Party Dress Database TM. All of my gal pals will take some snaps of the dead dresses in their wardrobes and we'll just swap them around like Eat, Pray, Love. Who's with me?