What to Wear for Daytime Clubbing

Dress for the room, not the street. The room at Dreamworx is warm from early on, and you will spend six hours in it and about twenty minutes outside, so pick the outfit for the warm bit and solve the cold bit with one layer you can take off and hand over. Trying to build an outfit that works at four degrees on a Newcastle pavement and at twenty five on a dance floor gets you something that fails in both places.

An early October afternoon is the trickiest weather there is for this. It is genuinely cold at three, colder at nine, and none of that has any bearing on how hot you will be by half four.

Start With the Fabric

Fabric decides how the day goes more than the shape does. You want something that breathes and something that moves.

Cotton, linen blends, viscose and a fine knit all behave in a warm room. Heavy polyester, anything lined and anything with a rubbery finish will hold every bit of heat you make. If a top feels slightly clammy in a shop, it will feel a lot worse after two hours of dancing.

Dark colours and busy prints are also practical, not just flattering. They forgive a warm room and a spilled drink in a way that a pale plain top does not.

What It Costs

Ideally nothing. Almost everyone already owns the right outfit for this and buys the wrong one because it feels like an occasion.

• Free: the top you already know you can dance in, the trousers that do not need adjusting when you sit down.
• Worth buying if you have not got one: a cross-body bag, usually fifteen to thirty pounds, which is the single best thing you can add.
• Skip: a brand new outfit worn for the first time on the day. New clothes have surprises in them.

If you do buy one thing, buy the layer you will take off rather than the outfit underneath. That is the piece doing the hard work.

The Layer You Take Off

Take a proper coat and expect to part with it at the door. It costs a couple of quid to leave it somewhere and it means you are warm on the way in, warm on the way home, and not carrying it round all afternoon.

Pick a coat you would be relaxed about handing over. Something you can describe easily and would not be heartbroken to lose. Put the cloakroom ticket in your bag rather than in your coat pocket, which sounds obvious right up until the moment it is not.

If you would rather not use a cloakroom, the alternative is a shirt or a light jacket tied round you. It works, but you will be dancing with it round your waist for six hours.

Cut It So You Can Move

Try the outfit on and then do the four tests: put both arms straight up, sit down, walk up a flight of stairs and turn round quickly. Anything that rides up, gapes or needs a tug fails.

Watch the waistband especially. A high, stiff waistband is comfortable for two hours and not for six. A hem that is fine standing still can become a job of work every time you raise your arms.

Straps are the other one. A strapless top means you spend your day thinking about it. If you love it, wear it with something that actually holds it up.

What Goes On Your Feet

Something fastened, with a bit of grip, that you have already worn for a full day. A block heel, a flatform, a boot or a clean trainer will all take you through to nine.

Tights are a fair call in October for the walk in, but a warm room and thick opaques is a long afternoon. Either go for a finer denier or go bare legged and let the coat handle the pavement.

The Bag Rules

Small, across the body, and zipped. You are going to be holding it for six hours and dancing with it on, so a clutch means one hand is gone all day.

• Card, keys, phone, cloakroom ticket.
• One lip product, blotting papers, a spare hair tie.
• A couple of plasters, in case your shoes have opinions.

Anything bigger than that and you will end up leaving it on a ledge, which is how bags get lost.

Coming Out at Nine

You come out of Dreamworx warm into a proper October night, and that is the moment the whole plan either works or does not. If your coat is in the cloakroom, it works.

Get your layer on before you leave the building rather than on the street. Sort out how you are getting home earlier in the day, because the Metro and the taxi ranks are both busy at that hour on a Saturday.

The measure of a good outfit for this is simple. If you got to eight o'clock, six hours of flashbacks deep, which is what we call the tracks you already know every word of, and you have not once thought about what you are wearing, you got it right.