'Tis the season to go shopping

The Man (from hereafter, I plan on calling my husband The Man; aside from the fact that he is, indeed, a man, he is also the witness to many of my rants so it seems fitting) found out when his work holiday party would be this year. Assuming we can find a sitter, we'll be going. Which brings a host of problems for me. The problems are called dress and shoes.

The Man bought a dress for me many years ago, from MaxStudio. It's a white slip dress, with a diaphanous, beaded black over-layer. All silk. It trails the ground. It requires a special bra. And high heels. Very impractical. But he loves it. I thought I would wear it to this year's holiday party. Until I got some of the details. The location is in the East Bay. So we'd be taking MUNI into downtown, and then taking a shuttle to the destination. And of course, the reverse to get home. So probably not a silk dress that trails the ground. Because aside from ruining the dress and possibly getting mugged, even wearing my full-length wool coat, I'd probably be cold. And that's just the dress, what about the shoes?

I find almost all shoes uncomfortable; I seem to be happiest in my unfashionable Birkenstocks and hand-knit wool socks--my feet are happiest that way, at least. Unfortunately for me, Birkenstocks and formal dresses do not go together. The last time I bought a dress was several (maybe three or four?) years ago; it was a grey, cowl-neck, sleeveless cocktail dress by Kenneth Cole that had a panel of ruching down the front and back. Is ruching still in?

What I still see are peplums. I am not a peplum person. At this point I'm starting to suspect that fashion is all a big game that tastemakers play to convince the general public to buy ugly clothes: "This is the height of fashion, this is what's in right now!" So at this point, I feel that my choices are to either wear something that I like that is horribly out of fashion, or buy something new that will be marginally more fashionable but overpriced and ridiculous. And either way, I'll still be cold and my feet will hurt.