What to Wear for Detty December

From around the third week of November, Lagos changes. The flights land, the group chats wake up, and suddenly there is something on every night. A concert. A beach thing. Somebody's homecoming party. Three weddings in one weekend because everyone waited for December. And every single one of those nights ends up on Instagram.

The women who look best all season are not the ones who spent the most. They are the ones who planned their wardrobes ahead, and who better to plan with than AMARAÉ.

 

Start with how many nights you are actually doing

Be honest before you shop. Most people say they are going out every night and then do about twelve real outings, four of which need something proper.

Twelve nights does not need twelve dresses. It needs three or four pieces that look different depending on what you put with them, and a clear head about which nights matter.

Think in categories, not events

The nights fall into about four types, and once you see that the shopping gets easier.

There are the beach and daytime things, which want something light that survives sun and sand and a long drive back. There are the dinners and the lounges, where you are seated in dim light and a closer cut does more than volume. There are the concerts and the big parties, where you are standing for hours and it needs to move with you. And there are the weddings, which have their own rules entirely.

Cover the four and you have covered December.

The Lagos traffic problem

Nobody factors this in and everybody suffers for it. You will sit in that dress for an hour before you get anywhere, in traffic, possibly in heat, and you will arrive looking however the fabric decided you should look.

This is the thing that separates a dress that works in December from one that photographed beautifully in the shop. Creasing matters. Fabric that recovers matters. If you cannot sit in it for ninety minutes and step out looking the same, it is not a December dress.

 

 

Everything is photographed

In a normal month you can wear the same dress twice and nobody keeps a record. In December there is a record, and it is tagged.

This is why loud prints and unusual details are risky for a long season. You get one wear out of a memorable dress. You get five out of a quiet one that you style differently each time, and the photos will not look like repeats because the earrings, the shoes and the hair did the work.

Plain does not mean boring. It means the dress is not doing all the talking.

Buy early, and not everything

Two things happen by the second week of December. The good pieces go, and everything that is left costs more.

So, buy the two or three anchor pieces now, in October or early November, and leave room for one thing later if something specific comes up. That is a better plan than panic buying on the twentieth for a party on the twenty-second.

It also means you get the fit right. A dress bought with time can go to the tailor. A dress bought in a rush is worn as it came.

What we would put in the bag

Something for the evenings, because that is most of December. Fitted, good fabric, works seated in a dim room. The Juniper is built for exactly these nights.

Something with a sense of occasion for the weddings and the bigger parties. The Willow does that without you having to think about it.

And something easy for the daytime things and the in-between days, which there are more of than people expect. The Iris covers that ground.

Three pieces. Change what you put with them and you have got the season.

Shop AMARAÉ before the season starts. Delivery across Nigeria and worldwide.

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