The Dress Quest Part 2: My Mission Accomplished

It's finally finished! I have bought a new Irish Dance dress and personally, I think it's beautiful. Here's a picture of it from the seller:

I picked this dress for a few key reasons which I believe everyone does (or should) take into consideration when buying a new dress, particularly one that's second-hand and sold over the internet.
First of all; price. Price is a key factor when buying a dress, you want to spend enough to ensure quality without paying so much that you might as well have just bought a brand new custom-made dress. You will see many dresses marketed for over $1200/£750, whilst this may seem reasonable for used Elevation and Gavin Doherty dresses I would ask you to think wisely before purchasing. For that £750 you could have a reputable designer such as Eileen Plater make you a custom made dress to your specifications, which is more personal and I believe better value for money. This dress was £550 and as I am a student and can't afford more, and have such exacting measurements, I believed this to be a good price for what I wanted without paying for a custom-made solo.

Second of all, you need to consider colour. Colour can look massively distorted in photographs online, and you may have chosen something you think looks pretty on the screen and then discover when it's delivered that it's not quite as nice a shade as you thought. To avoid this being an issue, choose colours that you know always bring out your best features. As I have (very) light colouring and very blue eyes, I know that most shades of blue bring out the best of my skintone and eye colour so it's a fairly safe bet when choosing clothes. Don't be tempted to choose overly bright dresses simply because you believe it'll be more eyecatching on stage, if it's not going to suit you and/or looks ridiculous the adjudicator like any other person will be more distracted by your dress than your feet so it's a little counterproductive.

Finally you must consider how appropriate the dress is for your age and level. I know this sounds a little uptight and/or obvious because we all pick outfits we believe are appropriate to our age, but it's definitely something you need to consider. One memorable line from Memoirs of a Geisha relates dreams to hair ornaments, that "young girls are eager to wear all of them at once, but an older woman looks foolish wearing even one". Don't judge me on that quote, I couldn't find my book to be more exact but you get the idea. With Irish Dancing dresses as with hair ornaments, an older girl's dress should be less ostentatious than say a 13 year old's. As I am 19 and so in the Senior or Over 18s category for feis apart from the All Irelands, I think this dress is suitable to my level because it is a classy Open dancer's dress; the use of only 3 colours keeps it simple and the almost subtle sparkle added with the diamontés adds just that little bit of extra stage presence and glamour. I also like the celtic-styled embroidery as I believe that Irish dancing dresses should look a little bit Irish, it's good to keep some tradition in our outfits.

If you keep these 3 points in mind when shopping around for your new dress, I am sure you will have great success. Look on my Useful Websites page to find links to dress sites I found useful in searching for my dress and check back for photos of me wearing the dress soon. A lesson in subtle stage-makeup for the older dancer and how to add a little bit of glitz for younger girls coming soon...