Was it a dress fail? Making clothing fails work.

So was the dress a fail? Or did I pull it off? 

   If you read my weekend update a few weeks back you would have seen I bought this dress, the picture to the left for a graduation party I was going to. I got it on Ebay and it was under party dresses. When you look at the picture it seems like a dress you could dress up for a party. The neckline in the picture is low but seemed doable. I scored this dress on Ebay for under 14 dollars and that was including shipping. I was actually really excited about my find. 

   The dress arrived in the mail just shy of a few days from the party date. I was so excited. I opened it up quickly. So what did I find? 

   I was so disappointed. First glance it looked like a long nightgown. You know the ones I am talking about right? The ones your mom used to wear to bed. A silky comfy long nightgown. The neckline came down way down. I am talking way down. I am talking pretty much the neckline was way below the bottom of my bra. The seaming was not the greatest as well. To top it all off it was so sheer. You could see through it. 

   I had resigned myself to the fact that I just bought myself a fancy nightgown to wear to bed. I had no clue what to do for an outfit at this point because my budget was already limited for this month. So this was a splurge for me in the first place. 

   I talked to a friend online. She reminded me that these days more formal dresses seem to be more slinky and sheer. She convinced me to find a way to make it work. So I set out to make it work. My advice when dealing with fashion and clothing fails. Find ways you can make it work. If you can't, returning it is an option. If you're willing to pay shipping, in some cases. Some companies will send return labels so you don't have to pay for shipping. In my case, I would have had to pay shipping and like I said I was on a budget this month. 

  So let's see what I came up with. First off, I had to address the sheerness of the dress and how low cut it was. I am a busty girl so I can NOT pull off a low cut dress like this. So for the top part to deal with the sheerness and the low cut I added a cami that was made from pretty much the same slinky material. For the bottom, I did have to wear two slips so it would not be see through. 

   So this took care of the fact that it was sheer and see through and that it was low cut. Now I could have pulled it off as is. However, my other complaint was the quality of the seaming around the arms mostly. I went through my closets to see if I had a cardigan that would work. I have many cardigans as I have this addiction to them. 

   I found one that was the same slinky material. It has a tie to the front which I think adds to dressing it up more as well. I bought a necklace from Amazon. Just a cheap 5 dollar costume jewelry necklace to dress it up even more and then I paired it with some black heels.

   So I went from being disappointed to saying "Hey I can pull this dress off". So my advice to everyone is. If you end up with something that does not live up to your expectations. Don't give up. Try and make it work. You may like what you see. And nobody would be the wiser on what you had to do to make it work.

  Have you had a wardrobe fail? Did you buy something online and it was not what you were expecting? How has your experience been with online clothing shops?