OOTD: Looking Glam on the Cheap (£36 to be Exact)

Friday, July 9, 2010

11 comments
EDITED TO ADD: Thanks Yi Mei for all the awesome outfit advice! (She's the one who helped me to coordinate my outfit, YAY!)

I don't usually like doing OOTDs (Outfit Of The Day), because I have a pretty much non-existent fashion sense. I mean, I'm still at the top-and-a-jeans stage, so obviously I haven't quite graduated from college casual. But over the weekend, I was invited to my friend's postgrad graduation, and the dress code was formal. I don't know about you, but when my own university had our graduation boat party for us postgraduates, we went as casual as possible, despite the formal dress code listing (some of my friends showed up in jeans, woohoo!). So I hoped that for my friend's event, I could just make do with whatever I had, since I'm kind of on a student's budget now (aka not too far from being flat out broke).

Turns out I had no such luck. Thanks to the awesome stalking power of facebook, I was able to look at photos of people at graduation dinners from previous years and other programmes. Holy moley, some of them were wearing floor-length gowns!

And thus began my (first-ever) unwilling shopping trip. I found out just a few days before the event, so trust me when I say it was all one mad scramble - and on a shoestring budget too! I trawled through the sales racks of high street stores, looking for a knee-length gown-like thing that would carry me through the evening (I didn't want a floor-length gown, as they would probably have been more expensive, and I just KNEW I'd trip up in them). And then I had to shop for accessories. And shoes. It was a stressful couple of days. I think it was the first time I've ever been stressed out by shopping!

So how did I do? Here's what I managed to cobble together, for all of £36:



Such beautiful, lush greenery in the background. Why doesn't MY university have such opulent gardens, darnit! :P

And here's a closer shot of my outfit with my friend:



Obviously it's not the most put-together ensemble you could choose, but I think for only £36, I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself! The dress was from Mango, and it was 50% off (woohoo!) and it was £25 (it could have been £24.99 or some weird number like that, but my brain remembers it as £25). The clutch was from Claire's, and it was 75% off (double woohoo!) and it was £4. And the necklace was also from Claire's, and unfortunately I paid full price for this (blah), but it was still decent at £7. So that made up £36 altogether!

Okay, I kind of cheated. The £36 didn't include any shoes, because I used the ones I currently had. Ideally I would have liked open-toed strappy heels, or something not close-toed, but there wasn't anything I liked that had a low enough heel (I'm a klutz!) and that was cheap enough, LOL. So I made do. The shoes themselves were the Dexter Auburn Patent Pump from Payless, which I bought a summer ago because it was all the rage among the fashion bloggers then. That, and the fact that they had a buy-1-get-the-2nd-pair-for-50%-off discount when I was in the store. LOL. But a quick google shows that they're still sold online.

Here's a screenshot of the shoes from the Payless website, HERE:



Anyway, here's a shot of my awesome cheap £7 necklace on:



This one is a bit more blingly than I usually wear, but I thought it was perfect since my entire outfit was all black, and I needed something to dress it up. So I thought a some nice bling was perfect. The necklace itself actually consists of four strands, with something different on every strand.

Here's a closer shot of the necklace detailing. It's a bit messy, but I guess with an all-black ensemble it worked:



And here's a photo of the £4 clutch. As you can see it's really cheap, and it kinda looks a little cheap, but I figured from far, and in photos, no one would be able to tell the difference :P



Anyway, that's my Glam-on-a-Budget (and when I say budget, boy, I mean it!) OOTD. I hope you guys have liked it. It's a little different from what I normally do, for sure, but I hope it wasn't too bad! We'll go back to makeup and nail polish in the next post, I promise!

11 comments:

  1. you look absolutley stunning, i love the outfit and the scenery is amazing-so beautiful!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You looked great! Really like how the dress fits you. The neckline especially, I like how it plunges but manages to stay modest :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello, there was a problem with my giveaway. I posted about it in my blog & also emailed you about it, but didn't get an answer, so I'm assuming it didn't go through for some reason. The post office told me they recently changed their policy and I can't send any nail polish via airmail. I'm very sorry and my only solution is to send you an alternate prize of some items I was collecting for my next giveaway, if you'd like to accept that. Once again, I am very sorry, I didn't think I would have problems sending it. Please email me if you would like the alternate prize of some eyeshadow samples from Hi Fi cosmetics, as well as some other goodies.

    ReplyDelete
  4. i think it's a very pretty dress, and your necklace is wonderful! glad you didn't wear a floor-length gown. i think your formal dress is perfect for the occasion.

    http://cherylclarke.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. so cute!! you look great!!! ur so opretty!1

    ReplyDelete
  6. you look hot! that dress really shows off your figure, i like it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. awww you look lovly, congrats! x

    ReplyDelete
  8. You did great! You look so polished and elegant, aww! :D Very lovely :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I LOVE that dress. Its fabulous....the bodice and neckline are just so original. Great find...you did a great job and it shows. :D

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love the dress and the bag! I cannot believe that your outfit is only 36 pounds! That's unbelievable!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for commenting! I read each and every single comment! If you ask a question in your comment, please check back to this post, as I will reply in a comment to this post as well :) Please note that comments with soliciting links to shops or websites will be removed. Thanks!

Linkwithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...