How about a shroud for your Black Tie event?

We sell a lot of those to women in your age group.

I hauled eight full-length gowns through the evening wear department at Macy’s last week with not one person asking, “May I start a room for you?” They have a laissez-faire attitude toward shoppers at Macy’s which reminds me of my mother: “You have legs, go get it yourself.”

I was looking for a gown because I am going to a black-tie party this New Year’s Eve.

I have never in my life gone to a fancy New Year’s Party. For years, on New Year’s, I used to sit around on the floor with my good friends Heidi and Steve and Herb and we’d tell stories and have fantastic amounts of deli and dessert.

Now, Steve is out in Reno at a retirement place and Heidi has been dead for 14 years. Herb feels New Year’s is a night like any other when he should be left in peace on the couch to watch a Nazi movie. These days, that’s what we do: sit on the couch and watch a movie and maybe, because New Year’s Eve is a big night, go a little crazy and have our own Kit Kat Bar rather than splitting one.

This fall, however, I joined a social club that takes its New Year’s Eve party so seriously they send an advisory:

“New Year’s Eve is a formal black-tie night, with a theme of Classic Hollywood glamour.”

What Classic Hollywood means to me is platinum blonds in backless gowns, who get pushed off yachts, die of botched appendix surgeries and, if they survive, can’t get work after twenty-nine.

“Do people really wear long gowns for this thing?” I write the friend who turned me on to this club.

“Yes, and everything else, too!” she writes back. “Wear your sparkliest. At least one guy shows up in white tie and tails. There’s dancing. If that’s an issue with length. I give remedial train management lessons.” 

Okay, I have to come clean. One of the reasons I joined this club was because my friend told me they threw New Year’s Eve parties at which people got dressed up and everybody danced and nobody cared if you came without a date. That sounded terrific to me. The problem was, like so much in life, I didn’t really think it through and now the black tie bit poses problems.

I have a few knee-length dresses that are suitable for parties, not that I go to any, but there is not one thing in my closet that is long or sparkles. I do have a gold lame dress I wore for a pre-COVID wedding that’s sort of shiny, but I’ve gained a few pounds since then and if I wear it, I won’t be able to breathe.

Also, while my male readers are unlikely to be aware of this, it is almost impossible to find razzle-dazzle dresses for women in the AARP bracket. 

Formal wear for women is divided into two categories: Backless, sleeveless, flimsy dresses, which are held up by your prayers and can be found in the Show ‘Em if You Got ‘Em Department, or, for the Woodstock Nation demographic, Mother of the Bride gowns, which are navy blue with a long satin skirt and a flowery lace bodice to suggest that you were once alluring enough to conceive.  The determining factor when selecting evening wear is upper arms. You are either willing to show them or you are not. If you are not, the sales ladies send you to the Mother of the Bride Department, which is in the basement, next to the morgue.

“Let’s see, you want something that will cover your upper arms and back, is not mid-thigh and not too low-cut. How about this shroud? It’s classic, it’s light, and you’ll be able to wear it again.”

There is nothing in my club’s New Year’s advisory that says you have to wear a long gown, but what else could Classic Hollywood glamour mean? 

I start at Saks. At one time – the early ‘80s, now that I think about it – they had a great selection of party clothes, expensive but not prohibitively so.  Now I find that to buy a nice dress, I’ll have to sell my apartment. The sale dresses start at $750 and there are maybe three with sleeves. And those, I discover, have cutouts at the waist. This must be how they punish older women for still wanting to look good.

I’ve got it – let’s do a cut out at the spot on the human body where there’s guaranteed to be a roll of fat: The midriff. Then – oh, God, this will be hilarious – when the old girl sits down to eat the fat will sqush out of the holes, like whack a mole.  That will teach her to go out to a glamorous New Year’s Eve party at 75 and try to have fun.

How many stores and sites do I hit? I lose count.  Nordstrom Rack, Century 21, Housing Works, Rent the Runway, The Fold London, The RealReal.  I come close at Bloomingdales with a clingy black dress, but it’s too small. This is another thing about glam dresses: If you are above a size ten, they’re tough to find because the designers believe you not deserve to go out to parties; you should stay home and starve yourself, ideally, to death. 

 I also realize that I am seeing the same backless, sleeveless dress, in the same sparkly silver or gold fabric, wherever I go. There’s obviously a factory in China churning it out by the ton and loading it onto freighters, where the Midriff Cut Out boys jot down whatever price comes into their head. The dress from Bloomingdale’s I like is $200 cheaper when I try to track it down in my size online.  

I finally end up at Macy’s, AKA The Largest Store in the World Where the Bathroom is Always a Block Away. Macy’s, for you out-of-towners, stretches from Sixth Avenue to Seventh Avenue. Their formal wear section is half the length of the store, which is to say half a block wide. When I get off the escalator, it’s evening dresses as far as the eye can see.  It reminds me of driving through Kansas, I’m afraid I’ll never make it through.  I take a photo and text it to my friend Carol. She is an expert in formal wear, as she once had to outfit herself as a Mother of The Groom. This is the equivalent of juggling with hand grenades. Many women do not survive it.  The Times obits cite “a short illness on the eve of her son’s wedding”, but we all know that’s code.

“I am at Macy’s,” I text Carol. “I am so overwhelmed I want to go lay down.”

“You will find it!” Carol tests back. “It’s hard work.”

I load up on the eight full-length gowns with which I started this column, in medias res. Many are beaded, so I am carrying about forty pounds. My shearling jacket makes it another five. Macy’s is over-heated. I am hot and I am tired, but it’s time to get into that Old Hollywood glamour zone. I start with a full-length, sarong wrap, Ralph Lauren gown, in midnight blue.

Is everyone familiar with Carol Burnett’s “Went With the Wind” sketch, in which she comes out as Scarlett O’Hara in the gown she’s made from the living room drapes, with a curtain rod across the shoulders?

It’s like that.

“I look like a pair of drapes,” I think.

The glittery long gowns, one of which has a sneaky layer of chiffon wafting out around my ankles, are even worse, although my Classic Hollywood association – Glinda the Good in “The Wizard of Oz”—is more glam. But these beaded gowns, as I said, weigh a ton. It had been so crowded at Macy’s I’d had to slip into the disabled persons’ dressing room. (If I hadn’t been disabled when I’d arrived at Macy’s, I figure, I am after schlepping these gowns.) The room has a wide, long bench. I lay down and put my feet up and consider New Year’s Eve.

Is it so awful to kick back on the couch with a good friend on New Year’s Eve and watch an old movie? Is anyone even going to ask me to dance at this dumb party? If nobody asks me to dance and I’m in a long dress, I will be monumentally depressed, whereas if nobody asks me to dance and I’m in a knee-length dress, I will be less depressed. Party expectations are proportional to length of dress. And, if I get a short dress, I will be able to wear it again. I just need to find a short dress that’s glam.

And I did. And if enough of you promise to become paying subscribers in the new year, I will post a picture. And now, I really am taking that break.

Happy holidays, people!