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Sparkly night to remember

4 min read

Good thing the package arrived in time, because otherwise I don’t know what I would have worn. Last weekend was the Mid-Atlantic Emmy awards, an event that would have me traveling to Philadelphia to sit in a room with hundreds of attractive people, half of them handsome men in tuxedos.

For the two pandemic years, the awards were virtual, allowing me to watch at home in floppy at-home attire. This year, we were back in person; thoughts of, “What am I going to wear?” haunted me. I am not prone to glamour, and unlike glamorous girls, my closet does not have a section devoted to evening wear, those kinds of classic black gowns that are always hanging there, ready to be zipped into a garment bag and taken on the road.

Those gowns are expensive, and price-per-serving is too high, considering that I don’t get invited to many places to wear them. And so I did what the men do with their tuxes. I rented.

There are lots of online places that rent evening wear. I decided on a shop that will send an item in two different sizes for one price. The site also shows lots of photos of real women wearing the garment, to show you how the thing looks on different bodies. (Note: Nobody in those photos ever has my kind of body.)

After looking through dozens of dresses, I ordered two things: a red wrap dress with long chiffon sleeves, and a black jumpsuit covered in sequins. In the photos, the red one looked happy and optimistic; the spangly one looked elegant and right.

The red one arrived first. I stopped what I was doing and ran to try it on. Nope. Nopity, nope, nope. I shoulda known better than to think I could pull of a chiffony, low-cut wrap dress with a high slit up the leg, a look best described as matronly strumpet. Back into the bag it went.

We were now a day away from the event. If the other item didn’t arrive on time, I’d have just worn my go-to evening outfit: black pants and a dressy white jacket – an ensemble that makes me look like a member of the wait staff.

But the bag arrived. It must have cost extra postage to send it because that jumpsuit was heavy. Every inch of it was covered in sequins.

It fit.

Standing there in front of the mirror, I doubted I could pull it off. I was a disco ball. A bobble dangling from a Christmas tree. A Liza Minelli impersonator on stage.

“I think it’s too much,” I told my friend Gina, who always looks fab in a bedazzled outfit.

“Wear it,” she said.

And so I did. Here’s the thing that Liza Minnelli never tells us: All that sparkles is heavy. A half-hour into the evening, I erupted into flop sweat. It was like wearing chain mail.

And speaking of pulling off the look, I literally couldn’t pull the thing off without intervention. Women go to the restrooms together at these events because our arms aren’t long enough to reach the zippers. I couldn’t wait to step out of that thing at the end of the night.

I saw lots of photos of me in my sparkly outfit. Alongside my naturally glamorous co-workers, I looked like I was standing on the risers in the alto section of the middle school chorus – uncomfortable and nervous and sweaty.

The next morning, I zipped the jumpsuit into a bag and sent it back, to be worn by the next girl. She’ll rock it.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.

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