Village Fashion Assistance

Why, yes, that is Katy Perry dressed in Gautier from the June 2011 issue of Vanity Fair. And there's a very good reason she's there for you to admire.

Let me tell you the story.

See, I'm going to the RWA National Conference the last week of June. This will be my fourth time. This year I knew I'd be invited to the Carina party, as one of their authors. Author cocktail party? Pretty much a slam dunk in fashion-planning department.

Now I had a bit of an additional complication, in that I discovered the Carina cocktail party would be right before the FFP Gathering. Not a big deal, right? One party to the next, stick to the same drink, all is fine, tra-la tra-lay.

Only there's one little hitch: the FFP party is a Superhero theme and I have my heart set on being Cat Woman. I don't think I'm ruining any surprises here by leaking that, especially since I fully expect to be far from the only Cat Woman at a Superhero party attended primarily by women. In fact, I figured I'd just go to the Carina party in my Cat Woman outfit. It's pretty demure, since I'll be more of a Michelle Pfeiffer version than the Halle Berry iteration since, hello, I do not have Halle Berry's vicious body. Dress myself only in black leather straps? I don't think so. My costume looks like this (sorry it's so small) and I figured I could be brassy and just wear it to the cocktail party, too.

But, and this is a big "but," then I was happily invited to the Harlequin party, too. I wasn't expecting to, but since Carina is a Harlequin imprint, they included us questionable digital types. It's after the FFP party, so that's fine. And, hey, everyone says it's THE party to go to, so woo hoo! Except, I get the invite and it's a rooftop Black and White ball, formal dress.

I've got nothing.

Clearly I'm not wearing the Cat Woman outfit there. Even if it wasn't an outfit that can't be worn outside of air conditioning (lemme tell you, that thing does NOT breathe), it just ain't formal, by any stretch. I look in my closet - nothing. You know what that means, right?

~FASHION EMERGENCY~

I'm going in a couple of weeks, have practically no time to shop, and no inspiration.

So, I'm getting my hair done - my carefully planned pre-conference beautifying appointment - flipping through Vanity Fair and whining about my fashion emergency to a sympathetic Larry. I get to the above Katy Perry pic and say, this! This is what I should wear. Larry peers over my shoulder. "That's perfect," he says, "that's exactly what you should wear."

I say, "Um, Larry, that outfit is Gautier and out of my league on so many levels it's not funny."

"Oh no," he waves the scissors in the air, "you could totally fake this outfit."

He outlines how I'll do it. Do I have a black skirt I could slit up the front? As a matter of fact, I do. I have a black pleather pleated Jones New York skirt that would work. Put a white lace slip or skirt under it, black heels, black leggings - I love how he never once considers putting white stretch lace on my thighs - with a big white blouse on top, belted with a fabulous Santa Fe belt.

I'm sold.

Of course, this is not so easy as it sounds. (Did it even sound easy?)

Once I left the salon, clutching my pic of Katy Perry in *my* outfit, which Larry thoughtfully tore out of the magazine for me, I began to lose heart.

"Just find a little black dress," my mother counsels. "You don't have time for this."

I went shopping Saturday morning and nothing, just nothing lit me up. I began to despair. Sunday I hit the consignment stores and Goodwill thinking I could cannibalize a wedding dress for the white lace underskirt. Big goose egg.

Then, in Dillards, of all places, I found a big white jacket - spunky, sheer and shimmery. It's the last one, and I make the sales gal take it off the mannequin for me. It's a large, turns out, but that works perfectly. I find some black leggings with black lace edging at Kohls. Already bought funky black heels for the Cat Woman look. I'm rolling now.

Back at home, I start Googling for wedding slips. KAK is helping me via IM. But even her Google-Fu, which is very strong, fails. She does, however, find me this fab black corset to wear under the white jacket.

Now we just need the lace skirt, which totally should not be this hard. But it is.

She's combing eBay. Laura Bickle comes on IM and I catch her up on the Story So Far. Almost immediately, Laura finds this skirt on eBay. It's perfect. It's in Hong Kong.

BUT, they have express shipping and it's not that much overall.

Win!

So, all the parts are acquired or on order. Yeah, we'll see how it all works out.

I think it will be fabulous. I'll try to post pics of the final product.

Could never have done this without my pals.