The nightmare goes as follows:

Yes, this is truly a celebrity and socialite’s nightmare. What can be worse than showing on the red carpet, society gala or A-list party wearing the same dress as someone else!

In December, this nightmare’s location was the White House. For the Kennedy Center Honors party, Laura Bush donned a beautiful $8,500 red Oscar de la Renta, embroidered tulle jacket and floor-length trumpet skirt – and smiled for the cameras with pride until she realized that she was not alone. Two other women were wearing the exact same gown. After she posed for the annual holiday picture, she hurried upstairs immediately to change her dress. She quickly composed herself and came down the White House staircase, this time in a black sequined dress that fortunately no one else was wearing.

According to a party guest Letitia Baldridge, Jacqueline Kennedy’s Chief of Staff and White House social secretary, instead of feeling embarrassed about showing up in identical gowns, “they all should have congratulated one another on their good taste and the fact that they could afford the dress.” (CBS)

This problem unfortunately occurs on the Red Carpet as well. Last year the gossip was about Reese Witherspoon wearing the same dress to the Golden Globes as Kirsten Dunst had worn three years before. This year at the Golden Globes, the nightmare repeated. Actress Jessica Biel arrived up in a stunning Valentino gown that Hillary Swank had worn two years before. Biel irritably reported to USA Today that “It is unfortunate that I was not told by Valentino no one had worn the gown before.”

The nightmare also lurks throughout the socialite’s party arena and fundraising galas. Lori Stoll, a Palm Beach socialite recounts her that she too has fallen prey to this ultimate fashion faux pas. At a charity event for Donald trump’s Mar-A-Lago Club, she arrived wearing the same sparkly dress another partygoer.

“My heart dropped for a second…and it made me think of those celebrity magazines where they have two stars wearing the same things and they ask, ‘Who wore it Best?’ It was potentially embarrassing.” (The Wall Street Journal; January 26, 2007).

Her solution was to “just stick to high end couture.” Letitia Bladridge sung similar advice: keep a closet like Jackie “O”. While she was first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy had her couturiers make sure that no one else wore her dress that season. According to Jackie Style, she “got an awful lot of dresses, but I think they went back. I don’t think she held on to too many, because her closets were never full.” (p.165)

Is this the solution? Only buy an $86,000 haute couture dress? Wear an outfit once and then retires it? What’s next – disposable designer clothing?

Thankfully, the answer is no. There is another option, a brilliant and quite successful option.

The solution lies in the hand of the designers and the fashion retail hoppers and store owners. The latest innovation that has taken over the fashion retail industry is a technological and complex system of recording and tracking exactly which client is buying what and matching it to the exact event that she plans to wear it for. This way, the boutique owner can be rest assured that she did not sell the same dress to another client who is also expected at that function.

This is customer service as its best. To diminish the fashion faux pas nightmare and one day even completely demolish it, designer boutiques across the country are beginning to record every customer’s information, including which dress she buys and which functions she will attend wearing the it, and then will call sister stores to ensure that the information is passed along to their branches as well.

Another boutique, Alpark in Palm Beach, makes daily updates to an excel spreadsheet that lists the customer’s purchase. The boutique even has a full-time client service manager whose sole purpose is to update and cross-check all the clients’ garment plans. The owner, Sami Alpark, exclaims, “I could never let my client suffer that embarrassment of being seen in the same gown or even the same designer as someone else… It’s a matter of principle.” (The Wall Street Journal).

This is clearly as luxurious, caring, and even clever as customer service can get. No longer do the fashion savvy socialites, celebrities, politicians, and stylists have to fret about this fashion faux pas. Thanks to the collaboration of the designer and the retail buyers and managers, this ultimate nightmare will cause its last sleepless night.