Fashion Friday: Midnight

A woman wearing a black and gold sleeveless, knee-length dress. She has short dark hair and is wearing sunglasses on top of her head. She has her hands behind her back and is wearing black loafers. She is standing at the entrance to a park with a wide path extending behind her, lampposts on the edges of the wide paths and many tall trees in the background

I actually looked back over some of my most recent Fashion Friday posts and I noticed that I wrote, I’m super excited for today’s Fashion Friday so many times. Even if I didn’t write it, I definitely, a hundred percent, thought it, in my mind. 🤪

So yeah, I’m super excited for today’s Fashion Friday. 🤣

OK, not going to lie, I probably wasn’t as excited to write this one up as I was with a couple of the previous ones. But I do very much like this outfit and Nick took some really nice photos so I am still excited.

This is probably only the third time I’ve worn this dress. My mum bought it for me a while ago, back when I had too many clothes. I had hundreds of clothes that I often forgot which ones I had. My mum spoiled me sometimes and bought me clothes – but she loved a good bargain (who doesn’t?), so she often waited for a sale. When she did buy me clothes, I honestly never stopped to think, “Do I really like this?” My mum has a keen eye for fashion and generally knows what looks good, but I know that over time I developed my own sense of style and I also noticed that what looked good did not necessarily look good on me.

A woman with short hair, her eyes downcast. She is wearing a sleeveless black dress and standing side-on. She has tortoiseshell style sunglasses on top of her head.
Gorgeous candid shot by Nick 😍
A woman with sunglasses on top of her head, standing by a large tree trunk. She has her right hand resting on the tree. She is wearing a sleeveless black dress with gold embroidery.
Getting good tree vibes.

Likewise, stuff that looks horrid on the hanger might actually look amaze-fucking-balls on me – you all know exactly what I’m talking about. My wedding dress, which I mentioned was the nicest on the rack but I still didn’t love it. In fact, my best friend Lilian said of the photos I sent her that day, “Man it actually looked ugly on the hanger!”

In actual fact, the dress in this outfit did look really gross on the hanger. In my wardrobe, when I lived with my parents, I said to my mum, “I don’t remember you buying this?”

“Yes! Don’t you remember trying it on?”

I went blank. I told her I didn’t recognise it and it looked “kind of not nice… old fashioned”. She encouraged me to try it on again to see if I remembered. I probably remembered vaguely, but I was surprised that it actually looked nice on me.

I smiled and said a reluctant, “Oh.”

Deep down inside I was partly miffed that I would be moving out soon and I’d gone through a process of paring down my wardrobe, and here was another to add to the fine collection and bring my numbers up again. 😂

A close-up of a woman’s hands hanging in front of her black dress with gold embroidery. Her nails are black with glittery gold accents. She has a silver wedding and engagement ring on her left ring finger, and is holding onto a pair of tortoiseshell patterened sunglasses.
Lace and nail details!

I’ve received a compliment or two on the dress though! I’m pleased with it. It’s comfortable and I like the style. I used to wear a lot of tight, short, bodycon dresses, but getting older, and with my legs bigger from working out, I gotta be careful there. 😜 This style of dress is certainly more tasteful.

I enjoy the mesh detailing and the embroidery on the dress. The edges of the armholes have faux leather detail, which is a nice touch actually. Gives the dress a bit of a modern update.

A woman standing in a circle-shaped area of concrete at the base of a large tree trunk. The area is bordered by a series of metal grates and covered in fallen brown leaves. There is some greenery in the background.
This weird concrete circle was actually dirty as fuck, but I thought it made an interesting photo, haha.

I’d been wanting to invest in a pair of loafers, and I did just a couple of weeks ago. My main reason was because they seemed like a great alternative to ballet flats, which are usually not very comfortable for me and don’t give support. I also don’t want to be walking in heels all day – even though I physically can. Besides, my tolerance for high heels has really gone down recently. Gotta take care of them feet. 😙 Loafers were a shoe style that I thought looked classy but could also be dressed down. I liked that positive-sounding combination.

I gave some thought as to whether I wanted backless loafers or normal ones. I want to wear loafers with socks, too. After trying a handful of pairs in my preferred shoe store, Nine West, I thought about it over the course of a week. I decided that backless loafers were probably not going to sit well on my feet, and returned to the store to have a closer look at the regular loafers.

I was umm-ing and ahh-ing over this black pair and a rose gold pair. I tried both pairs of shoes on with a black dress, in the store. They both looked good. And I could imagine the rose gold working with other outfits just as well. I wanted to pick one, try it on with my clothes at home, and then decide.

A woman’s feet with black loafers, standing on black and light brown tiled pavement with the tiles laid out in concentric circles. Some leaves sit on the pavement.
These loafers have served me well so far!

I went home with the black pair and stuck with it, but now the rose gold ones are on sale (almost half price!). I’ve been enjoying the black ones and finding them very comfortable and versatile… I want the rose gold ones too! 😢🤷🏻‍♀️

My nails are courtesy of Personail, a Sydney-based nail wrap brand. I found out about them at a weekend market at The Grounds of Alexandria, which is incidentally where we got married. ☺️ I was reluctant to try them, as many other nail wrap brands I’ve tried have had wraps that are too thick, don’t stick well on my rather curved fingernail surface, or are not flexible. They had a discounted introductory offer, though, so I gave it a shot. They had sent me a randomly selected set, and I was really impressed by how well it held up. Almost two weeks went by and they stayed put. After that positive experience, I waited for a sale and bought five packs. This set was one of them. It’s called Midnight, which is where the name of this outfit comes from. It seemed fitting.

A close-up of a woman’s right hand on her hip. She has black nails with gold glitter chevron accents. The dress she is wearing is made of black mesh and gold embroidery.
“Midnight” style nails, which match the dress well

I actually did my nails the night before I decided to wear this dress. I didn’t realise the matching was on point. I had other nail wraps to choose from but I hadn’t seen black on my nails in a while. And the other nail wraps I had were mostly partially transparent, and I wanted to have fun with those by layering them over painted nails. That’s why I chose this one.

Seeing as I’ve mentioned our wedding a couple of times in this post, I thought I’d let you know that, yes, some posts are coming soon with more details about our wedding! Maybe I ought to do a six-month anniversary post next weekend too? 🍾

A woman wearing a black and gold sleeveless, knee-length dress. She has short dark hair and is wearing sunglasses on top of her head. She has her hands behind her back and is wearing black loafers. She is standing at the entrance to a park with a wide path extending behind her, lampposts on the edges of the wide paths and many tall trees in the background
This one is similar to the photo at the beginning of the post, but I thought it was just as great!

I hope you like this outfit, let me know what you think!

📷 All photography by Nick.

Outfit details


What are your thoughts on loafers? Also – any particular details about our wedding that you’d like to hear about? (Meanwhile, there’s this quick recap about our wedding!)

Reply to Jo

Comments on this post

The dress looks absolutely amazing! I’m a sucker for lace :)

I love your nails too, I’m definitely going to check them out! My nails need some loving, I’ve left them abandoned for a while hehehe.

I’d love to hear more about your wedding too!

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Your dress is beautiful! I love skater style dresses and I find them so flattering. For me, they cover my hips and they make my chest look bigger, so win win! 😂

My mum has a great sense of style too, but I don’t always think that she knows what will look good on me anymore. She’s said a few times that I could wear anything, but I don’t feel that way, especially because I’m self-conscious of my hips.

I wish I could wear loafers but any sort of slip-on shoes destroy my feet. And I can’t be bothered to deal with the blisters when trying to break them in!

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the outfit is really nice – i love the shoes. they look comfy but smart :) looking forward to more wedding posts too! (And an anniversary post would be interesting too :) )

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🤣 Well I suppose it is definitely good to continue being excited about a feature on your blog, considering it means you’re still passionate about it! Although even if you happen to be like, “I’m not as excited about today’s Fashion Friday as I was with the last one,” it’d still be okay—it’s just nice to see that passionate is still there. ;)

Ah, I like this dress…and I’m really picky when it comes to dresses! I’m not sure the top part is all the great (definitely old-fashioned). But—and I apologize before saying this but—it looks like a dress that does not require a big chest, which is something I don’t have and accounts for a lot of assumptions about my age (ugh), and I admire clothes like that! Haha. About 90% of the clothes I find either require breasts or are totally unflattering if you have little to none.

(Or maybe I’m just really bad at finding clothes.)

When other people bought me clothes/told me what I should buy, I never asked that either. Only recently—last Christmas—did I find two things I actually really loved that I still love months after. 😍

I’m not sure if I’d wear loafers myself, but the ones you feature in your FF posts are stellar.

The only thing I have to disagree with is along the lines of black dress/blue dress—do you remember it? Because the dress, both on my laptop and my phone, looks like silver embroidery and not anywhere near gold. The only visible gold is your nails.

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I love this dress and it’s definitely something I would wear myself. I’m not a fan of loafers personally, as I can never find any that fit right – I have very narrow feet and often resort to the kids section! Your nails are beautiful and I like how well they match the dress too.

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