In the early 1990s, my party dress was a black lace Anna Sui tutu, writes Lucinda Rosenfeld. I’d found it on the floor at that mecca of all things brand-named and heavily discounted (and frequently ripped): Century 21. It had a flaring tulle skirt that ended at crotch level, a maillot-like top, and only one egregious pulled thread. It was part early Madonna, part Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with a generous helping of Margot Fonteyn in Swan Lake. In keeping with the style at the time, I paired it with black suede clunky-heeled Mary Janes. I can still see myself wearing it at a soirée for a semi-obscure literary magazine, raving about David Foster Wallace’s cruise ship essay in Harper’s to some goateed aspiring novelist, pulling on my Rothman cigarette – and wondering who encapsulated the ethos of “downtown” more fully than I. By 30, however, I’d decided the dress was too young and jejune for the new grown-up, worldly-wise me.
Fast forward six months to New Year’s eve 2000. The latest boyfriend (and later my husband) had broken up with me a few months before but now he wanted me back. Fine, I’d told him. But he certainly wasn’t going to be invited at the last minute to the elegant dinner and birthday party I’d spent weeks planning and preparing for with my gay boyfriend B (I was born on the last day of the 1960s). What’s more, we’d already worked out the seating arrangement, as well as the boy-girl ratio, and Gay Boyfriend wasn’t the type who was going to be OK with an extra place setting being squeezed on to the end. He’d already informed a friend’s new boyfriend that he wasn’t welcome without a suit jacket.
I would, however, permit Now Husband to buy me a birthday drink beforehand, and then drive me to the out-of-the-way Upper West Side location where, in a relative’s empty penthouse (we were still the poor relations), B and I were throwing our party.
There was only one problem: where was I going to find the fortitude after two glasses of champagne to tell Now Husband that he couldn’t come up in the elevator with me? I knew that he had no other early-evening plans. But the man I eventually married can smell a party like those airport sniffer dogs can smell raw fruit. What kind of dress would give me the strength to slip away at the right moment?
A slip dress, naturally. Mine was a pale pink silk number with line drawings of flowers and tiny bows on each of the spaghetti straps. I can’t say for sure when I stopped feeling comfortable walking out of the house in underwear but, on my 31st birthday, I apparently had few qualms. I still remember pulling the dress off the rack and thinking it was the epitome of sensual delectability. At the same time, perhaps on account of its warm hue and floral accents, there was something sweet and even cheerful about it that saved it from being too vampy.
In fact, I felt positively slinky in that thing, that night – so slinky, in fact, that despite the sad face and many entreaties, I managed to slink out of Now Husband’s car on the corner of Broadway and 79th, and not look backwards. At least not for a few hours. (I married him five years later.) In that manner I think I finally made my point about not being taken for granted. Though part of the credit is clearly due to designer Tracy Reese. Moral of the story: never underestimate the need for a good party dress. Though for my 41st birthday this new year’s, I plan to shop for something a little more modest.
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