I'm sorry I'm hardly around anymore, it's a busy time of year for me. I think of you all the time though, I promise.
It's a Monday night and I'm still recovering from last weekend's birthday celebrations. Every year, as my birthday approaches I step up my shopping game as I begin the hunt for the perfect dress. Some years I find it, others I've settled. Last year I had my heart set on a red dress. I had this picture in my head of a siren-red body con dress that would hug all the right figures, and just scream sex. I never found that dress (there were NO red dresses around until AFTER my birthday, when they popped up in virtually every store I walked into, sigh). I settled for a pink dress I had bought a while back but had never worn. And it made me die a little inside. lol
It was then that I vowed to start looking for my next bday dress (NBD) early. For a while I became obsessed with red dresses, with a small collection of six or so accumulating in my wardrobe as possibilities for NBDs. Lots happens in a year though, and the idea of wearing red on my birthday became less and less appealing as this year's celebrations grew closer (namely the fact that every second fb birthday album I looked at starred a stunning, semi-drunk birthday girl in a red dress).
I love following trends, but at the same time I hate looking like everyone else. I like to stand out; I like to be different.
So when I saw Lea Michelle on the cover of Shop Til You Drop in this long sleeve, fully gold sequin dress, I knew it was the one.
With the help of a friend (may I say, one I thought unlikely to be able to help with such matters), I managed to find out who this dress was by: Balmain. And apparently it had graced over 7 magazine covers, globally. Whoops, I guess I'm a bit behind in my reading haha. And it came with the ridiculously insane $34,000 price tag. Yes. $34K. Like, a car. Or a house deposit. And just like that, it went from being the one, to being wayyyyy out of my league.
I hunted for weeks in shopping centres, and trawled countless online boutiques for something even remotely similar, but all I got was boring sequin shifts, and tacky, cheap, too-bright-gold tarty little numbers.
And then, late one night, whilst sifting through what felt like hundreds of pages on ebay I found it: a cheap knock off of the Balmain gold sequin dress, from a dodgey asian seller. The shoulders were a bit more gaga-esque, and the sequins looked obviously more budget - but for the $33,920 price difference, I was willing to let that slide. I wasn't sure if it'd be completely hideous when I saw it in person, but being the closest I could find to what my heart desired, I took the plunge and clicked 'buy it now'. And I'll tell ya, when I finally had it in my hands, I didn't regret it at all (what I did regret though is not reading the measurements carefully enough to realise how short it was - the seller gave the option of having it lengthened but I was careless...I ended up having to wear it as more of a long top with cuffed shorts than a dress). Teamed with some cheap look-a-likes of Christian Louboutin's Bianca Heel, I certainly felt a million bucks in this outfit, despite spending a whole lot less. Sooooo gaga.
Dress, $79 including postage from Ebay; Shorts, $10 down from $40 from Cotton On; Belt, $2 down from $15 from Rubi; Heels, $40 down from $60 from Spend-less shoes.
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