Twenty years ago - sure. I would have snapped up that beautiful garment, buckled some strappy shoes and headed off to a chi-chi bar.
But I'm 50. And although that doesn't mean dressing in knock-off copies of Queen Elizabeth's coat dresses, it does mean, for me anyway, that you need to know your limits.
Older skin doesn't have that same gorgeous texture and luminosity that young skin does and no creams and potions will fix that. It's a trade-off. I much prefer the life I have now than the life I had when I was 30, even if I can't wear drop-dead-gorgeous sexy gowns with plunging cleavage, teeny-tiny straps and a low-cut back.
Other 50-year-olds might be able to. Other 60-year-olds might be able to. But not this one.
I understand and appreciate the luxury of growing old. I'm looking forward to getting even older, even though I know there will be accommodations along the way.
So I read with utter astonishment a story from Britain about a woman - also in her 50s - who has been given permission to refuse life-saving treatment because she feels she has lost her "sparkle".
The woman, known only as "C", felt losing her youth and beauty meant she had lost everything that mattered in life.
When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she refused chemotherapy because she feared it would make her fat.
And she refused to discuss treatment options except to tell her doctors she didn't want any change in the size of her breasts that would affect her wearing a bikini.
She told her daughters she wanted to go out with a bang, stating she would never allow herself to grow poor, ugly or old. She had been through four husbands and had raced through their fortunes, and had had numerous affairs to acquire a glamorous lifestyle.
She was furious when one of her three daughters announced she was pregnant because she felt being a grandmother would take her off the market.
She drank a vast quantity of alcohol to end her life after the cancer diagnosis but she survived. Her kidneys, however, were irreparably damaged and she required dialysis to stay alive. She refused the treatment and her doctors made a bid to the court for the dialysis to be imposed, because she had a "dysfunction of the mind".
The judge disagreed. He said the woman knew exactly what she was doing. "C has lived a life characterised by impulsive and self-centred decision-making without guilt or regret.
"She has been an entirely reluctant and at times completely indifferent mother to her three caring daughters. It is clear that during her life, C has placed a premium on youth and beauty and on living a life that, in C's words, sparkles."
Accordingly, the judge decided she was capable of making up her own mind on her treatment and was entitled to refuse it. It seems extraordinary that a woman could place so little value on life when so many people are fighting to stay alive for their families and for themselves.
To feel that you have no worth once you are no longer young, that your three daughters aren't worth fighting for, makes me so sad.
I have no idea what the woman looked like - she was granted anonymity - but surely nobody can be so beautiful that it would be better to be dead than to be old and, as she perceived it, undesirable.
And dead she is. She died a few days after the court ruling.
I can't imagine there's much sparkle six feet under - unless she was buried in a glow worm cave. If only she had looked outside herself.
There is plenty of beauty - and sparkle - to be found in the world around you when the image in the mirror starts to fade.
