I bought my red velvet dress for $34 on clearance one January, right after spending an entire holiday party in black and wishing I hadn’t.
It has been to a lot of parties since, and I’ve gotten every one of those looks wrong at least once, usually in my bathroom mirror, which has terrible light and lies to me about everything.
A look that lasts one photo isn’t a good look.
Velvet is gorgeous in the first picture, and then you sit down, or you put on a coat, or you get into a car, and the whole thing starts telling on you.
So this is one dress, three parties, and everything I’ve learned about keeping it looking the way it did when I left the house.
If you want more ways to wear the fabric itself, our velvet outfits post goes past dresses.
If you’re still deciding on a dress at all, start with these holiday party dress ideas.
Get the Red Right Before Anything Else
Reds split two ways.
Warm ones lean toward tomato, rust and orange, and cool ones lean toward wine and cranberry.
Neither is better, but one of them will make you look rested and the other will make you look like you’ve got a cold.
Hold the dress up under your chin next to a window, in daylight, around 10 in the morning if you can manage it, and take a picture.
Then look at your skin in it, and ignore the dress for a second.
Not in the bathroom.
Trust me on that one.
Velvet makes this trickier, because the pile catches light from one side and swallows it from the other, so the same dress can look like two different reds across one room.
I think that’s the best thing about it.
It also means a swatch on a screen tells you almost nothing, and buying online means you should plan on sending it back if it arrives a shade you didn’t order.
The Office Party: Cover Some of It Up
This is the night a red velvet dress can feel like too much, and the fix is a plain black blazer.
Put the blazer on over the dress and suddenly there’s a lot less red, and what’s left looks intentional.
Add opaque black tights, a block heel of 2 inches or so and small earrings, then stop.
I once added a statement necklace to this exact outfit and spent the whole evening feeling like I’d come straight from the Christmas pageant.
If the neckline is low, the blazer buttoned once takes care of it.
And when the boss goes home and the music gets louder, the blazer comes off and you’ve got a whole different outfit, without a trip to the bathroom mirror.
One more thing about the office: stay clear of the glitter.
Velvet holds on to it.
A little dust off somebody’s ornament sweater will live in the pile until spring, and a lint roller only gets some of it, so I keep a folded piece of packing tape in my bag for exactly this.
Christmas Dinner: Soft, Warm and Able to Sit Down
Dinner is the hardest test, because you’ll be sitting for 3 hours and getting up every 10 minutes to help with something.
I swap the blazer for a soft cream cardigan and the heels for low boots, since nobody at my aunt’s table needs me taller.
My hair goes up with a handful of bobby pins, partly because it looks nice and mostly because it keeps it out of the gravy.
Long sleeves get pushed up before anybody passes anything.
Food and velvet don’t mix well.
If something lands on you, blot it with a clean napkin and leave it alone, because rubbing pushes the stain into the pile and flattens the spot around it.
Sit on a napkin if your chairs are the scratchy kind, too, since that’s where the seat of a dress goes shiny first.
New Year’s Eve: Go Shiny on Purpose
Now you get to stop being careful.
Everything I took off for the office goes back on and then some: metallic heels, big earrings, a red lip, sheer tights or none at all if your party has good heating.
Velvet soaks up light, so anything shiny next to it looks shinier than it does on its own.
A gold shoe that seems loud in the store looks perfect against this fabric.
If you need more ideas for the night, these New Year’s Eve party outfits go well beyond red.
Hair can go either way.
I like it down and a little messy for this one, with one side pinned back so the earring shows.
The bobby pins go in crossed, in an X, because a single pin sliding out at 11:45 is how you end up with half a hairstyle at the countdown.
Tights: How Sheer Is Too Sheer
The number on the package is denier, and it’s the thing to read.
Sheer tights run about 15 to 20 denier.
Semi-opaque sits around 30 to 40, and opaque starts at about 60.
Brands don’t all measure the same, so treat those as a rough guide and hold the pair up to your hand in the store.
Sheer black against red velvet looks a little old Hollywood, and it’s what I want for New Year’s.
Opaque looks tidier and more covered, which suits the office, though it can tip toward school uniform if the rest of the outfit is too prim.
Semi-opaque is my pick for dinner, since you still get a bit of leg and they tend to survive the dog.
Buy 2 pairs.
A $9 spare in your bag makes a snag at 8 p.m. a lot less dramatic.
Heels You Can Still Stand In at Midnight
I’ve left too many parties early because of my feet, and I’m done doing that.
A block heel beats a stiletto for anything over 2 hours, and it’s easier on a dance floor too.
Wear new shoes around the house with thick socks for 30 minutes the night before, and put gel pads in while the shoes are still dry and clean so they actually stick (otherwise you’ll find one in your sock at 1 a.m.).
Black suede looks richest next to velvet, and a metallic works when you want the shoes to be the point.
Skip the red shoes unless they’re an exact match, and they won’t be.
Two reds that almost match look like a mistake from across the room.
Keep flats in your bag anyway.
The foldable ones take up about as much room as a phone, and nobody has ever looked at the photos and noticed your feet after midnight.
Let the Neckline Pick the Jewelry
The neckline decides this for you, which is a relief when you’re getting ready and already running late.
Gold warms up a red and silver cools it down, so match the metal to whichever kind of red you bought.
And wear one big piece at a time.
Earrings and a necklace both shouting at once is how a nice dress starts looking like a costume.
There’s more on this in our guide to accessorizing a red dress.
The Coat Can Crush It
Pressure is what velvet hates most, and winter is full of it.
I arrived at a party once with a perfect diagonal stripe across my chest, courtesy of the seat belt.
The pile had been pressed flat for 20 minutes, and it stayed that way all night.
Now I undo the belt the second the car stops and I sit forward as much as a person legally can, and if somebody else is driving, I keep my coat off and over my lap.
A long wool coat with a slippery lining is the best thing to wear over it, since the dress can move underneath instead of being dragged.
Avoid anything fuzzy on the inside.
Fleece and velvet grab each other, and you’ll spend the first 10 minutes of the party picking lint out of your dress.
Caring for It So It Comes Back Next Year
Never put an iron directly on velvet.
Direct heat crushes the pile and leaves shiny marks, and those don’t come out.
Steam it instead, from the back of the fabric, with the steamer head held off the cloth.
Then brush it gently in the direction of the pile once it’s dry.
I do this the night before, so that I’m not standing in a towel with a steamer an hour before the party.
Read the label before anything gets wet.
Most velvet dresses want dry cleaning, though some synthetic and stretch ones can be washed by hand, and the label knows which one you’ve got.
Between parties, hang it up without a plastic cover, with a couple of inches of space on both sides so nothing leans on it.
Lips and Nails, Last
A red lip with a red dress works if the two reds are cousins.
Warm dress, warm lipstick.
Cool dress, cool lipstick.
If you can’t get them to agree, go with a soft nude and let the dress do its job.
My nails get done 2 nights ahead, in a deep red or a plain neutral, with fresh top coat the night before so they’ve got a shine that holds up through a lot of wrapping paper.
Then I do my last check, the one I’d skipped for years.
I sit down in the dress for a full 60 seconds, stand up, and look at it in the bathroom mirror, bad light and all.
If it still looks good after that, it’s going to look good in the photos at midnight.
