Business Casual

Earlier this week I attended a luncheon up in Los Angeles for people who I’m going to assume had pretty deep pockets. It was a great lunch hosted by the fundraiser group for the USOC and by D.I.S.C., who is the medical provider for Olympic level athletes. From what I could gather, I was a special invited Olympic “guest”. There were two of us, a BMX athlete who actually won a silver medal in the last Olympics, and me, an Olympic… hopeful. Now, if not managed correctly the fact that I actually have not been to an Olympics yet could be a huge let down at functions like these, but I have learned over the years to shine in spite of the lack of hardware. Either that, or I lie. Let’s be honest, nobody is going to go home and google it so who am I to disappoint. (I’m mostly kidding)

So, there were a lot of important business people in their fancy business attire…and then there was me. Perhaps I got the fancy right but I think I might have missed the mark on the “business.” I have a lot of clothes. In fact, my entire wardrobe is split up in between at least three different cities and I still could go a very long time without repeating an outfit. But there are obvious holes. And these gaps become glaring any time I need to wear something that is considered “business attire”. I wear spandex to my office and I go to a church that has no dress code so I prefer shopping for items I will use or something that excites me. Business clothes are boring. They don’t make me feel fabulous and they have no real use in my wardrobe. So functions like these leave me searching frantically for something appropriate.

I figured this presented the perfect opportunity to go shopping. So I bought a new dress that I thought was cute and figured I was good to go. But when I went to get ready, I realized 4-inch heels made a real difference to the length that I never really considered in the dressing room. And my bra kept doing a peek-a-boo. Awesome. There was nothing I could do about the shoes but I did manage to fix the brassiere problem. At the last minute I decided I would at least pull my hair back because in my limited knowledge of what professional women look like, combed hair seemed to be part of the package.

The room was 97% male so I’m going to assume that nobody was that upset with what pretty much amounted to a mini dress. Not to mention, there was a huge poster sized picture of me in my infamous gold daisy dukes at the entrance, so maybe my dress seemed quite conservative in comparison. Next time I’ll do better. Maybe add some pearls…

(and if anyone has some suggestions of good stores to shop at that have appropriate clothes that are still fashionable and not all that boring, I’d love to hear them)