If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t have a lot of disposable income to drop on holiday garb that cost of a bomb. There are two matters of domestic life that seem like a sad waste to me: one of them is not eating off the good china; the other is letting your best dress curdle in its dry cleaning plastic like The Picture of Dorian Gray.

He is twenty-one. He has been twenty-one for almost half a century.

Don’t let this happen to your cocktail dress.

painting of Dorian Gray by Ivan Albright

I call this purple polka-dot number my Barney dress. Even though it’s memorable and inexpensive, I believe a once-worn dress hasn’t done enough to earn its keep.

In January of 2009, my friend Emilia and I were gifted last minute tickets to one of Obama’s inaugural balls. I tried not to panic: I had less than 24 hours to update my jeans-and-long underwear look, which, in anticipation of freezing my butt cheeks off on the National Mall, was all I had schlepped with me to D.C.

We had no time to mess around. All of D.C. and Northern Virginia had already raided the boutiques for their inaugural soirees, and so we headed straight to the biggest designer-discount store of all: Loehmann’s.

Gown: Tibi New York

Canary-yellow clutch: DSW

But I couldn’t believe my eyes when we stepped through those sliding doors. Apparently, a cyclone had hit Loehmann’s and the fabric debris tossed to the floor had been scavenged by wolves. I was about to give up on the grisly evening gown section when I looked up and saw a sole survivor: this purple, 100% silk Tibi dress. The original, slashed-through price was $1,049, but Loehmann’s had democratically marked the frock down to $60. Pinned to a far wall, the dress appeared to be 6-feet long.

Finally, I had the advantage: where the Cinderellas before me had seen a polka-dot Grecian muumuu and rejected it, I saw an advantageous amount of cheap silk yardage for my 5”11 frame. And my friend knew a Vietnamese tailor who was working overtime for the weekend’s many black tie events. Kismet.

Earrings: from the collection of Mercedes Guevara

As luck would have it, the dress was actually too long. I had the tailor not only take it in three sizes, but cut a few extra inches off the hem to fashion a matching elastic belt. I scored a yellow clutch at DSW, and my friend loaned me a pair of her mother’s mod metallic earrings, straight out of early-60s Mexico City. The tailor was making adjustments until the 11^th hour, so thank goodness her shop was located in the basement of my friend’s apartment building! Nevertheless, it was worth the wait: when I donned the dress for the American Scholar’s Inaugural Ball at the Four Seasons, my pasty winter skin was sheathed in a much-needed splash of color.

Two and a half years later, I needed a last minute frock for my friends Paulius and Skaiste’s wedding in Lithuania. Getting a garment bag past the Gestapo ticketing attendants on Ryan Air was the hard part—choosing to recycle my favorite $60 dress? Easy like Christmas morning.

Glamorous Lithuanian Bride and Groom: Skaiste & Paulius