Never in my life would I have imagined that I couldn’t wait to stop shopping. Ever. Never in my life would I have imagined that I would keep looking at my watch wondering when I could leave the mall and go home. Ever.
Last weekend, my coach and I finally ventured out to try and find my pageant necessities: clothes. My coach is the type who believes that the earlier you have your clothes, the better. That way, you can rehearse walking and sitting in everything and that there will be no surprises. Not to mention that I’d probably have to get a number of the items altered anyways.
She advised for me to take the entire day off from work because it was going to be a full day of devoted searching. Fair enough. We started off at a mall in Northern New Jersey, hoping to not run into too many crowds. Unfortunately for us, the crowds were already out despite the time of the day. Regardless, we stopped at a designer dress shop first. It seemed like we went through dozens and dozens of dresses. None of which really seemed to pop out to me, but my coach has an eye for what will work. I tried on heavy dresses full of sequins, mermaid dresses that overemphasized the shape of my hips (“Oh just take it off. It’s hitting you in all of the wrong places,” my coach would say), a gorgeous black velvet dress that we were afraid would show dust too much under the lights onstage, and finally an A-line Camille dress that made my body look absolutely regal. Of course, I’m difficult and didn’t like it right off of the bat. However, my coach has such a trained eye, I would try on something for a split second and ask her to help me zip it up. With barely half of the dress on, she would tell me to take it off because “it just wasn’t it”.
We moved on. Next came the cocktail dress, which was much easier to find. It had to be all black and something fairly easy to move around. It was for the opening number of the competition where all of the contestants are expected to learn a dance routine. I found an absolutely cute little date-like dress. Very much excited about its purpose after the show 🙂 Anyways, following the cocktail dress came the interview suit, which did take some skill to find. However, once it was found, we both KNEW that it was THE suit. The perfect color for my deep winter complexion and monochrome to lengthen my short frame.
Shopping with a professional pageant coach took a LOT of time and energy, more than I expected, but absolutely loved her knowledge and input. We covered two malls and still didn’t find everything that we needed. We still had to find my stilt-like shoes (for all occasions) and swimsuit. We definitely tried to cover the bathing suit, but were completely unsuccessful. There is a specific type of pageant swimsuit that works the best for most girls; they’re cut to be very flattering. Unfortunately, they tend to be very expensive. So, our next mission is to maybe find one online at a pageant resale site and I have no idea where these magical shoes are going to wander in from. We shall see. Wish me luck!
Brooke Leigh Howard 