I'm Too Sexy For This Dress (SassyBlonde)

So I have a question for all you lovely ladies out there... have you ever tried on an eight thousand dollar dress? Weeelll... neither had I, until today.

Red and The Muse know that I am a girl who loves her clothes, even if I am at the moment a bit past chubby and seen mostly in yoga pants. One of my favorite things to do after Sunday shows is pop over to Neiman Marcus Last Call and try on shoes. (Remember these Bibas? Thank you Last Call.) Well, today I deviated from my normal flight plan and browsed over to the premier designer evening gown rack just for giggles (Really, I'm not stressing about this concerto thing in September, I promise.) There were a few truly bizarre gowns hanging there, including a chartreuse number that just about put my eyes out, but mixed in among the crazies were two dresses I had to try on, right then. One was out of purely practical instinct-- well, okay, not purely practical-- since it fit the bill for my touring orchestra. The other, however, piqued my interest in a major way, especially after I saw the price tag. (Evidence after the jump.)

I'm always completely fascinated by what must be going through designers' minds when they come up with some of the strange things I see coming down the runways. Especially when genius goes suddenly horribly, horribly wrong.

Exhibit A: A beautiful Marchesa gown, priced originally at $8,580.00. Yep, that number is correct folks. What the hell is going through these peoples' minds, I ask you.

This looks like a beautiful specimen of a dress, no? Strapless, beautifully cut silk with a gorgeous pattern, and you can see the back inset peeking out from around the bottom. Everything looks peachy, right? Well, the slightly obi-ish belt is a giveaway that things are about to get scary here, folks.

I give you Exhibit B: The Rear View. If we start at the bottom, everything looks great: see the detail on that inset? The sequin pattern is really incredibly beautiful. (See the detail shot, here.) And then we pan up, and there are the wings. Wings, people. Not just for fairy godmothers, anymore, Cindy. You too can have your own pair attached to the back of your kimono. What looks like the deconstructed, unattached structure of the dress is actually little kimono-sleeve replica drapes attached right at or below where your shoulder-blades would be. Hey, maybe they could double as pockets, right? This is the kind of thing that just makes me chuckle. Sans wings, I bet this dress would have sold for the asking price, but the designer had to go and get all crazy for Memoirs of a Geisha right when things were getting good.

That being said, if the pricetag wasn't still stratospherically high at $2574.00, it could be salvaged with a little surgical wing-removal. It looked pretty fabulous on (no, I will not post that picture), but the thrill was in the pricetag after all, not in the idea of actually taking it home.

After all, I have bigger fish to fry... I have to get my ass to the gym so I can fully justify this fantastic Marc Bouwer dress. Oh, God help my bottom line.