style council ask mrs. Exeter; Leave the meringue-skirted explosions of froufrou to the fairy tales.

Q:In our neck of the woods here in the Midwest, we do not have as many black-tie opportunities for ladies of any age, let alone a certain age, to wear long dresses as you do, or as I understand you do, in the East. So this past spring, when I was getting ready to put on a new and carefully selected ball gown for a special charity evening, I telephoned my daughter, who lives nearby, and suggested she stop by with her daughter, age nine. You know, show them how the other half of their family dresses when the occasion calls for something truly attractive. Imagine my chagrin when, in an enormity of duchesse satin, I descended the staircase of my house and saw the adoring expression on my little darling's face looking up at me go from awe to mystification.

"Granny," she said, all sugar and spice. "You look like an upside-down mushroom!"

Out of the mouths of babes. I decided not to disown her but thank her when, upon closer examination, I realized she was right. What is the thinking nowadays, then, Mrs. Exeter, when those of us who will never be confused with the Jennifer Lopezes and Elizabeth Hurleys of the red-carpet world buy a long evening dress after "a certain age"?

A:Selecting an evening dress is perplexing. Lucky are the ladies who have Paris couturiers to help and guide them. The rest of us have department stores and dressing-room mirrors, not always easy.

Unlike deciphering what in the new fall collections will spark a perfect balance of function and fashion for the office, a board meeting, dinner, or going to the theater, choosing a dress for a formal occasion is possessed by other, far more amorphous expectations.

You may be the president of a bank or a brain surgeon or First Lady by day, but when the invitation specifies black tie and it comes to donning a long dress, you may have but one reflexive response: Cinderella. The memories of girlish fantasies past, all those honeysuckle fairy tales, limit the advances women should have made in the arena of formalwear. After a certain age, these fairy-tale visions can get us into trouble, turning a woman into a caricature. And the three dominant caricatures to avoid in long dresses are: mushrooms, sausages, and torn butterflies.

Out of the mouths of babes, indeed, here is what young Zac Posen posited when I mentioned your letter to him recently: "We live in such an age-obsessed culture, why not rebel? The princess fantasy doesn't apply. Why not express yourself, instead, as a formed adult?"