Today’s Cinderellas Face an Old Question: How to Dress for the Ball

What to wear? Sounding a bit dazed, Amanda Cutter Brooks pondered her options for the Costume Institute’s benefit gala, which takes place tomorrow night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.The party’s theme, “Dangerous Liaisons,” did not exactly suit her, what with its suggestion of heaving bosoms and stiffly powdered hair. Try as she might, Ms. Brooks, 29, a fixture on the New York society circuit and a house muse for the design firm Tuleh, could not get in the mood. “I’m a total creature of the 20th century,” she said on Thursday. “I really had no vision for myself.” So she took her problem to Bryan Bradley, Tuleh‘s designer, who lost no time trussing Ms. Brooks in a pointy-waisted corset worthy of La Pompadour.”It’s a stress moment,” said Sally Singer, an editor at Vogue, a gala sponsor. “In New York,” she said, “there is such an emphasis on looking sleek and chic. Period dressing presents a challenge to all that.” Ms. Singer sidestepped the problem, and the period, by choosing a 1950’s boned evening dress tweaked by a softening of stays. After all, not every New Yorker is as nervy as Madonna, who’s promoting her “Reinvention” tour dressed as Marie Antoinette, with a poster showing her on all fours, the better to display a milky décolletage.Based on a www.nytimes.com article.