Had a client last year, older woman, tell me black velvet was “the safe choice for a woman my size,” and I actually stopped what I was doing to argue with her about it, because that word “safe” is doing a lot of unpaid overtime in that sentence. Safe implies boring. I don’t think boring is the right complaint here. I think black velvet is the choice you make when you don’t trust the room, and there’s a difference.
That said, I’m the wrong person to ask about whether it’s a tasteful choice, because I own four of these dresses and one of them I bought specifically because it looked, in the dressing room, like something a Bond villain’s assistant would wear to a quarterly review, and I have never regretted it once. My friend who does the buying for a boutique here thinks that dress is a costume, not a dress, and we’ve had this argument at two different dinners now without either of us backing down.
She thinks velvet should behave itself, sit close, do a quiet job. I think if you’re already wearing a fabric that catches light differently every time you move, you may as well let it be a little dramatic about it. We have not resolved this. I don’t think we’re going to.
Where I won’t budge is on where the money should go. The cheap velvet, the stuff that looks like it was pilled in the box before it ever left the warehouse, is not worth it at any price, because velvet’s whole job is catching light and the bad stuff catches it wrong, flat in some spots, shiny in a way that reads more couch cushion than dress. Spend the extra thirty or forty dollars here. This is not a category where the budget option is a secret win.
Shoes were their own small war.
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I tried this dress with strappy heels first, the ones I’d wear with anything, and it looked like I was trying too hard in two different centuries at once. Swapped to a plain black boot at the last minute before a dinner in November and it settled the whole thing down immediately, like the dress finally stopped arguing with itself. A friend wore the same dress with a bright red heel to a holiday party and got three compliments before she’d taken her coat off, so apparently I don’t have the final word on this either.
The gamble pick, if I’m honest, is the version with the deep V back, because it is genuinely stunning on the right person and reads a little like you got lost on the way to somewhere fancier on the wrong person, no gentle way to say it. I’d try it before I’d buy it.
So is black velvet safe or boring. I still think it’s neither. My friend still disagrees, mostly on principle at this point, and I’ve made peace with that being where we land.
