There is no such thing as a Christmas party outfit.
There is no such thing as a Christmas party, either. There are four of them, they land within about three weeks of each other, and they want completely different things from you.
Which is why December undoes people who are perfectly capable of dressing themselves for the other eleven months. It is not that the clothes are hard. It is that one question is quietly standing in for four, and the answer to each one is different.
The four parties, and how to tell them apart
The work party. The one with the most rules and the fewest written down.
The client or industry do. Work, but with people who will meet you again in March and remember what you were like.
The friends’ party. The only genuinely free one, and the one where you can wear the thing you have been waiting to wear.
Christmas Day itself. Family, heat, food, and a camera in every hand.
Sort which one you are dressing for before you open the wardrobe. Half the December panic I hear about is somebody trying to build a single outfit that works for all four, which is a problem with no solution.
The work one is still work
This is the part people get wrong, and it is the party that matters most.
Dress one step up from your normal work clothes. Not five. The same coverage you wear on a Tuesday, in a better fabric, with different shoes.
Change the material, not the amount of it. Silk instead of cotton. Satin instead of wool. A skirt you would wear to the office in a colour you would not. That is the whole transformation and it takes ten minutes.
Let the jewellery do the celebrating. Earrings that catch the light are the cheapest and safest festive signal there is.
And apply the Monday test. Somebody will photograph you, and that photograph will sit on an internal channel until roughly February. If you would rather it did not, change now rather than at eleven o’clock.
None of that is about being dull. It is about being the person in the room who is having a good time rather than the story about the good time.
It is going to be hot, and then it is not
An Australian Christmas is a summer event and most party dressing advice was written for the northern hemisphere, where December means velvet and sleeves.
Natural fibres or nothing. Linen, cotton and silk move heat away from you. Polyester traps it, and a polyester dress at a standing party in the heat becomes a decision you regret at about hour two.
Loose beats fitted when it is hot, which is the opposite of what most people reach for when they want to look dressed up.
And Melbourne will do Melbourne things. The long-term December average here is a mild 24 degrees, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s climate records, which tells you almost nothing useful, because the same month produces 36-degree afternoons that fall away to 19 by the time you are standing at a tram stop at eleven. Take something for your shoulders. The full version of that argument is in dressing for Melbourne weather.
Strapless is a heat decision as much as a style one. It is cooler and it also means you will spend the night thinking about it. If the fabric has any weight at all, or if there is dancing, choose straps and save your attention.
What festive attire actually means
It appears on about half of all December invitations and almost nobody defines it.
It means dressier than work and less formal than a wedding. That is it. In Australia it very rarely means floor length, and it never means a costume.
A cocktail dress, a jumpsuit, or a good skirt with a lovely top all sit comfortably inside it.
Colour is welcome, which is not true of every dress code, and a red or a deep green in December reads as effort rather than novelty.
If the invitation says nothing at all, ask the host what they are wearing. It is a normal question and it takes one message. The longer version of decoding invitations lives in the wedding dress codes guide, and most of it transfers.
Sequins, and how much is too much
I have never needed talking into sequins. I have talked a great many women out of too many of them.
One shiny thing. That is the rule and it has never failed.
Sequins on the top half, plain on the bottom. A sequinned top or jacket with plain black trousers is the most reliable Christmas outfit there is, and it takes the sparkle up near your face where it does some good.
Or sequins on the bottom half and plain on top, which is the version people forget. A sequinned skirt with a simple white top is a daytime outfit that turns into an evening one just by changing the shoes.
What does not work is sequins plus metallic shoes plus a metallic bag. Each one is lovely. Together they stop being an outfit.
And sequins are not only for night. I wore a sequinned skirt with a perforated cotton blouse to a morning church group years ago and it was the most cheerful thing I owned that week. Daylight does not disqualify sparkle, it just wants less of it.
The venue decides more than the dress code
Nobody tells you the venue and it changes everything, so ask.
A rooftop. Wind. Everything light will move and everything short will become a management problem. Also colder than the street by several degrees once the sun goes.
A backyard or a deck. Grass and gaps. A stiletto sinks into one and drops through the other, which is a short and undignified story. Block heel, wedge or a good flat.
A function room. Air conditioning set for men in suits, which means it will be colder than you expect for the entire evening.
A restaurant. Seated, which is the only one of the four where a fitted dress is a genuinely comfortable choice.
And assume you are standing. Most Christmas parties have chairs for about a third of the room, and the people who get them are the ones who arrive early and never move.
Turning what you wore to work into what you wear at eight
This is the most useful December skill there is, because the work party almost always starts before you have been home.
Change the shoes. The single biggest shift available, and it fits in a tote.
Change the bag. A work bag announces that you came from work. Anything smaller announces that you came out.
Add one thing at the neck or the ears. Not both, and it does not need to be expensive.
Take off one layer rather than adding one. A jacket removed from a good top is usually the whole job.
I wrote about this back in 2014 when I had a patent pencil skirt and a silver peplum top and every intention of swapping the heels before a party in Sandringham. I ended up in flat boots and leather pants instead, because my feet had opinions, and it worked anyway. The whole thing is written up in how to transform your day outfit for a Christmas party, tassel bag and all.
Getting home, which is part of the outfit
Nobody plans this and it is the part of the night that goes wrong.
December is the worst month of the year to get a car, so assume a tram, a walk, or a long wait on a footpath in whatever you have on your feet.
A bag with a strap. You will be holding a drink, a phone and somebody’s present. A clutch means one hand gone all night and a real chance of leaving it on a table.
Shoes you can cover a block in. Not the whole night, just the last twenty minutes of it, which is the part that decides whether you remember the party fondly.
And something over your shoulders that is yours. Borrowed jackets at midnight are how good jackets disappear.
Christmas Day, which is quietly the hardest one
Four jobs at once, in heat, in front of a camera.
You will be cooking, or near somebody cooking. So nothing that trails into things and nothing precious.
You will be on the floor at some point, handing out presents or retrieving them. Length and fit need to survive that.
It is the most photographed outfit of your year. Those pictures come out every December for the next twenty years. Wear something you actually like rather than something new that you have not decided about yet.
Avoid white, if there is a toddler or a pavlova within reach.
And pick your fabric for creasing, because you will be in it from ten in the morning until whenever the last person leaves. Linen looks glorious and remembers every chair it has ever met.
Doing all of this on nothing
December is an expensive month before you have bought a single thing to wear, so this matters more than usual.
Shop your wardrobe first, properly. Lay out the three or four dressier things you own and work out which shoes and which jewellery change them. Most people are two accessories away from an outfit and one hour away from knowing it.
Then the op shops, which in the fortnight before Christmas are full of last year’s party dresses worn once. I have written down which Melbourne op shops are worth the trip and how to work a rack quickly.
Borrow, honestly. Party clothes are the one category where a wardrobe full of once-worn things is normal, and your friends have them.
And do not buy a dress for one night at full price in the second week of December, which is peak price for the least choice of the year.
Years ago I wore a satin and sequinned ruffle dress to a Christmas party that had cost me under ten dollars as a vintage find. It photographed beautifully, it got more compliments than anything I have paid real money for, and that party frock under ten dollars is still up on the blog. Prices have moved since then. The principle has not moved at all.
The short version
- Work out which of the four parties you are dressing for before anything else.
- The work one is still work. One step up, and apply the Monday test.
- Natural fibres in the heat, and something for your shoulders at eleven.
- Festive means dressier than work and less formal than a wedding.
- One shiny thing.
- Ask about the venue. Grass, rooftop and air conditioning all change the answer.
- Shoes, bag, one piece of jewellery: that is a work outfit turned into a party one.
- Christmas Day needs to survive cooking, the floor and a camera.
Here is the actual trap in December, girls. Four parties in three weeks feels like four outfits, so people buy four, wear each once, and start next December in exactly the same place. The way out is three pieces that recombine into all four nights, and working out which three is a job for somebody standing in your wardrobe with you. Book a personal stylist in Melbourne for a two-hour session, $299, and that is the cheapest December on offer. Where the wardrobe genuinely has nothing to build on, three hours of personal shopping in Melbourne at $399 will find the three pieces, and they will still be working next Christmas.
Now go and find out whether it is a rooftop.
And now you’re Looking Good Girls.
“A cheerful heart is good medicine.” Proverbs 17:22.