We've all been there. You're going to a talk on pirates at your local women's club, and you all decide to dress up as pirates. But when you arrive waving your skull and crossbones with a parrot on your shoulder, you discover that the man giving the talk will not be discussing Long John Silver and his ilk. He'll be talking about his experiences being kidnapped by Somalian pirates.
It sounds like a scene from a sitcom, but this ACTUALLY HAPPENED the other week to an unfortunate Women's Institute branch in Devon. The group were expecting former sea captain Colin Darch to talk about walking the plank and pieces of eight, so they thought it would be amusing to dress for the occasion. It wasn't until most of them turned up in full pirate regalia that they realised their mistake
The treasurer Stephanie George, who started to wonder whether they had got things horribly wrong when she saw Darch's book in a shop the morning of the talk , told their local paper:
“I suggested we dress up as I suspected it was a general talk about piracy or something to do with the Appledore Pirates, the fundraising group. I work in Walter Henry’s Bookshop in Bideford and on the morning of the day the meeting when I noticed Colin Darch’s book on the side and put two and two together. I thought “oh god, how awful!” By then it was too late, just thought we would have to go with it. It was lucky Colin was such a good sport. There he was delivering this harrowing story about how he was held hostage and feared for his life, and we were all sitting there dressed as Captain Hook. It was a bit different to our usual prettiest tin competition or the flower or the month. At our meeting this month we are having a baby picture competition. I don’t know who was scarier for Captain Darch - us dressed up as pirates or the real Somali pirates."
In fairness, I'd say it was the real pirates, but it was probably a close run thing. Anyway, this is basically my favourite news story ever, and it did make me think of the importance of dressing for the occasion. We've all had moments where we've got it wrong - think poor old Bridget Jones turning up to the Vicars and Tarts party in full regalia only to discover everyone else had changed their mind.
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Back in 1998, I turned up at my very first day of proper grown up employment at the Sunday Tribune in the most "professional" outfit I could muster at the time - a pair of Levi's sta-prest 70s-style trousers that I'd bought in New York (they were cool at the time, I swear) and a fitted '70s charity shop shirt. Everyone in the office was wearing jeans. Luckily my "formal " garb wasn't very formal at all, so I didn't exactly stand out, but I did feel a bit like I was wearing a costume.
Anyway, I've always thought it's better to be underdressed than over dressed - if you're dressed more casually than the people around you, you can try and pull off a sort of devil may care attitude, whereas it's hard to pull off, say, a full length evening dress without looking a bit self conscious. But others might find the idea of being in jeans at an event where everyone else is in suits and frocks even more unbearable.
So what about you? Have you ever dressed for the wrong occasion? If you do get it wrong, would you prefer to be under- or overdressed? And if you have turned up in a completely inappropriate outfit, I hope the people around you are as understanding as Colin Darch, who told the North Devon Journal:
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“They were lovely ladies. They made me judge who was the best dressed which was a difficult choice. In the end I decided to choose the one with who had a fluffy parrot on her shoulder. Of course there weren’t any parrots near the real pirates.”
But of course.
