Lilah Ramzi reflects on the ways she created glamour in a year without black-tie dress codes and ball gowns.
Vogue’s Parties Editor on the Joys of Getting Dressed Up
Unbeknownst to me, I once wore a wedding dress to the office. It was an unremarkable summer’s day, and I dressed in a white midi-dress from the 1950s with strips of broderie anglaise and a nipped waist. They were, of course, the Vogue offices, but beyond that, it was by no means a “big day.” Only many months later did I happen upon an Etsy listing for the exact same vintage dress at a bridal shop. If one man’s trash is another’s treasure, I reckoned one woman’s wedding dress could just as well be another’s workaday white dress.
I enjoy getting dressed up: to the office, yes, but that’s just the start of it. As our parties editor, on most pre-pandemic mornings, I would pad into the office with a garment bag containing the evening’s look—some divine A-line puff gown shaped like a croquembouche or a dress so sculptural it could almost stand on its own. My evening ensembles were the highlight of the day. After finishing up work, I headed to the ladies’ room where I would slip into something a lot less comfortable but a lot more me. Part of my job’s appeal was that it allowed me to board a flight of fancy. The destination was one filled with ball gowns, vintage cocktail dresses, satin shoes, and beaded clutches—things completely out of sync with our times (even more so now) and more in line with that of Hollywood’s golden age. Edith Head heroines (Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood, Grace Kelly) and midcentury vintage have long fueled my fashion fantasies. Each event was a chance to style myself accordingly.
Of course, the fantasy was slightly altered because I had to work at each party. Interviews with a heavily diamonded chairwoman expounding on her record-breaking fundraising year, casual inquiries in the powder room as to whom a nearby model was wearing, waiting patiently at Cipriani alongside several hundred other obedient partygoers for Rihanna to show up to her own Diamond Ball hours late—well worth it. It was all part of the glamorous carousel ride, and it would all come to a screeching halt.
For the first month of quarantine, I woke and fell asleep to the sight of a tulle Carolina Herrera dress hanging on a hook in my bedroom. It’s one of the more pleasant visions that belongs to the blur that I associate with the start of the pandemic: a New York Times map growing redder, cylinders of Clorox wipes, and a gleaming white USNS Comfort entering New York Harbor.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Lilah Ramzi
