How to Wear One Dress to Three Different Events

The same dress, three weekends, three sets of photos, and nobody notices.

There is a particular fear around repeating an outfit in Lagos. Everything is photographed and tagged, half the same people are at every event, and somewhere there is a record.

So people buy new. Every wedding, every party, every dinner. And the wardrobe fills with dresses that were worn once and cost more per wearing than anybody wants to calculate.

The women who dress well all year are not spending the most. They just understood something early, which is that people remember outfits, not dresses.

Change three things and it is a different outfit

Shoes, jewellery, hair. That is the whole trick and it works better than it has any right to.

Flat sandals with small studs and your hair down is not the same outfit as heels, big gold earrings and your hair up, even on the identical dress. Add a jacket and it changes again. Add a gele and nobody is looking at the dress at all.

What people carry away from an event is an impression, and the impression is built from the whole thing. The dress is the quietest part of it.

Which dresses can actually do this

Not all of them, and this is the part to get right before you buy rather than after.

A dress with a bold print or one unusual detail is memorable by design. That is fine if you want one showstopper, but you will get a single wear out of it in front of a given crowd. The pieces that carry three events are quieter, and they hold their interest in the cut and the fabric.

Fit matters here more than anywhere. A dress that fits you properly reads as right in a church, at a restaurant and at a reception, because what people are responding to is that it suits you, not that it suits the venue.

And it has to survive being worn properly. Fabric that creases in traffic or clings after an hour in the heat is a dress you wear once and quietly stop reaching for.

Three weekends, one dress

Say it is a black midi with some detail in it. Nothing loud.

Saturday, a white wedding. Closed heels, gold at the ear and the wrist, hair swept up so the neckline does the work. Restrained, because the bride is the point.

The following Friday, dinner with your girls. The same dress, flat sandals or a low heel, one thin chain, hair down, a bolder lip. Nobody in that restaurant is thinking about last Saturday.

Two weeks later, somebody's birthday party. Heels again, statement earrings, a jacket you take off once you are inside, hair done differently. Third outing, third set of photos, and it reads as three outfits.

Keep a note of what you wore where

This sounds excessive and it takes four seconds.

When you post the photos, note which dress and which event. Now you know you wore it to Tobi's wedding in March and you are not standing in front of the wardrobe trying to remember whether that crowd has seen it.

Most of the anxiety about repeating is just not being able to remember. Take the guessing out and the fear goes with it.

The maths nobody does

A dress you wear once cost you its full price for one evening. The same dress worn six times cost you a sixth of that each time, and it is usually the one you feel best in anyway, because you know how it sits.

That is the whole idea behind how we build at AMARAÉ. Pieces that take styling well, hold their shape through a Lagos day, and do not shout so loudly that you can only wear them once.

Buy fewer. Wear them properly. Nobody is keeping the record you think they are.

Shop AMARAÉ for dresses built to be worn again. Delivery across Nigeria and worldwide.

Read next: What to Wear to the Office in Lagos

Read next: What to Wear to Dinner in Lagos