Always Pack a Party Dress by Amanda Brooks

Author:Amanda Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

My beautiful (if somewhat too casual) Marni blouse and skirt with bad styling by moi.

Mistake 3: I shouldn’t have tried to make the look something it wasn’t. I selected these sky-high satin platform sandals that I thought would give the look a bit of edge, but in the end they, too, just looked heavy. A good classic stiletto pump would have done the job just fine. The good news is that I wore the shoes over and over again after that night.

Despite my unsuccessful look, I had a blast. I had learned from my pink princess gown moment that life was too short to let my outfit ruin my night. After an early chat with American designer Phillip Lim, who knows me well enough to come up to me and say, “Amanda, that outfit is so not you!” we had a laugh and I got over myself. At dinner, Lou Doillon, the model/singer daughter of Jane Birkin and one of my all-time style icons, sat across from me in the gown I had stupidly declined (she made it her own by adding a beat-up leather jacket on top), and Robin Thicke sat at the end of the table with his then wife, Paula Patton. Meeting celebrities at the Met Ball is really fun because fashion is not their world, so they feel excited to be there and open to chatting. Also, everyone there assumes that everyone else is really important, so the atmosphere is very friendly.

2009

There was always a point every year when I wondered whether I would be invited to the Met Ball. Some years I was asked well in advance, giving me loads of time to plan, prepare, and agonize over what to wear. Other years have cut it quite close.

Here’s how it works: Vogue fills the majority of seats by asking big fashion- and beauty-related companies to buy entire tables. These tables go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. No joke. Then Vogue invites all the people who can actually afford the $25,000 individual tickets to send in their checks. I have never been one of those people. I have always been one of the girls that Vogue either sits at one of its own tables (as their guest) or I have been filler at a fashion brand table. After all, there are only so many celebrities you can sit together at one table before it explodes.

So in 2009, the invitation just never came. Not in the mail, not in an e-mail, not on the phone. Nothing. I waited and waited, and then I suffered through the “What are you wearing to the Met?” questions and the “Which afterparty are you going to?” queries and just figured that maybe my time was up. Maybe I wasn’t the cool young fashion girl anymore. I was sad, but what could I do? I knew that most girls would kill to go to the Met Ball just once, and I had been going for many years.

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