Words and photos by Susie Sandford Smith

I spent ages umming and aahhing about whether or not to celebrate my birthday with friends this year. I normally love birthdays but, since splitting from my husband I've been finding them (especially mine) quite hard and this year there were a couple of other things going on that left me not quite in the partying mood. In the end I decided to pull my socks up and have a little bit of a do. Our house always used to be the social house and I'm quite keen to get back to being more hospitable so, I got to planning a rather last minute get together.

I spent a good while planning the food and drink (though ended up not making half of what I'd planned to make, tut. I'm ashamed to say there wasn't even one cocktail in evidence!). But I didn't put that much thought into an outfit. I'm quite a jeans and t-shirt person for nights out, putting on a bit of make up and some jewels but not much more than that - I guess it's a hark back to my music industry days, but I'm increasingly pushing the boat out and dressing up my body as well as my face. With less than a week until my little do I turned to my trusty ASOS and lo and behold, it had THE perfect dress for a grown-up party.

This dress is both full on and in your face with a deep and revealing neckline, and demure and sophisticated with the long sleeves and pleated mid-length skirt. It really does feel very grown-up and wears so well. I'm not sure I'd wear it to the offfice or to anything where I had to look very right and proper (as I'm not a massive fan of modesty tops) but I would definitely whip this out for dinner or a cocktail party or...a trip to the theatre/opera etc. Partly because I've hurt my foot, but mainly because I felt like I didn't want to dress this up too too much, I teamed the dress up with a lovely pair of animal print flats (I designed them myself) from the Australian company Shoes of Prey. I've included a link to them at the end of this post because I do think that the concept is great and their shoes are quite good but, if you've got really wide feet, as I have, I wouldn't recommend them. I think that they use the same width sole for all of their shoes and I think, when you're getting into EEE fittings, they probably need to use a wider sole. I've had problems with another pair that I bought from them and I wouldn't buy from them again. If I had a standard size foot though, I would.

Always a test for clothes that I wear - how well do they stand up to, and support, air guitaring - this dress gets a big fat 10 out of 10.

Now I know not everyone can have a bottom as brilliant as mine...I mean, people pay good money for similar, but this dress does a lot to help in that department with clever seams fitting the bodice completely to the torso and the pleated skirt falling gently over the behind.

The dress even behaves well in a sudden gust of wind, turning me into a Marilyn Monreo-esq screen icon! (This fashion blogging is really going to my head).

Here am I, doing my best to get a close-up of my beautiful Jacey Withers necklace, and unbeknownst to me Horatio is busy photo bombing EVERY shot. Haha. Blinkin children.

Dress - ASOS Curve (unfortunately there aren't many sizes left), Shoes - Shoes of Prey, Necklace - Jacey Withers