What Wendy Wore: New Year’s Eve Masquerade

It’s “Flashback Friday,” meaning it’s a good day to get around to my New Year’s Eve outfit post. If I procrastinate on this one any longer, I’ll wind up being sucked into a long-term procrastination spiral, at the bottom of which will be the 2018 New Year’s post!

To ring in 2017, my peeps and I attended a dinner and masquerade at the McKittrick Hotel, which is not a hotel and never has been, despite the amusing “history” on the website. The space was originally a block of warehouses. Now it’s the multi-story set for an immersive theater adaptation of MacBeth called Sleep No More. Instead of watching a show take place on a stage, the audience walks through different rooms to watch scenes play out.

We didn’t participate in Sleep No More on New Year’s Eve — it would have made for a very long night with a very early start — but we did enjoy theatrical diversions during our very good dinner.

Dinner theater!

Then it was on to the masquerade, which featured different entertainment in different rooms, ranging from DJs to actors portraying theatrical scenes. Guests were asked to wear all black, all white, or all gold. This was easy for me — I had already worn an all-gold outfit last March.

What Wendy Wore
Dress: From Allan & Suzi’s vintage/consignment store (2004)
Unseen gold shoes: Prada (2010)
Unseen gold purse: Louis Vuitton (2016)
Tiara: Bloom Design Studio (2016)

I believe that tiaras should be worn as often as possible and a masquerade is a good place to start. The leafy tiara in the photo is not a multi-million-dollar, 18K gold, Wendy Brandes design. It’s made of fabric, and I got it from Bloom Design Studio on Etsy. Check out their other styles: Some of those are wedding-worthy.

I also bought a surprisingly large, beautiful, and inexpensive gold fan from Party City. Who knew Party City was a place to go for attractive accessories? I kept forgetting to deploy the fan, however, so it only appears in one blurry group photo.

All my peeps dressed in black. An easy choice for New Yorkers!

Part of our group managed to get a better photo late in the evening/early in the morning. I’m amused that I appear to be wearing antlers here. Also, I’m literally laughing out loud as I try to imagine what Eryn was doing in this shot (she’s the second from the right).

It’s my party and I’ll wear gold if I want to. Click to enlarge.

This photo is one of my favorites. Congratulations on reaching peak photobomb, random woman!

Say “aahhhh!”

The New York Times was at the masquerade too, but we got no photobombs from its reporter.  Alas!