"Creative" dressing alert

I'm going to a conference this week in Oxford. We're sponsoring the coffee lounge and as a result get some sponsors' tickets. It's a highly sought after event but I confess to feeling a bit flummoxed at the "attire" guidance which states business casual but goes on to say that suits should not be worn and in fact it's better to go for "creative casual" but no shorts.

?????!!!!

I would rather they'd gone with business casual. What's creative? Floaty kaftans? The tribal look?

For anything work-related, I find it much easier to wear something smart and classic. Skirts and trousers with fairly plain tops, jazzed up with bold jewellery, is what I normally wear. I loathe wearing jeans or going casual with colleagues. The reason is that you can commit so many sins, unwittingly, with jeans, immediately catapaulting yourself back to the 80's if they're the wrong cut, length or colour.

I get Grazia every week but I don't buy any of the outfits. I sometimes take a trend and add it in a tiny, subtle way - for example, they recently featured little evening bags with feathers, and I've been looking out for them ever since. But I avoid a) high fashion for fear of looking mutton and b) going into Top Shop where I feel 110, or designer stores where the shop assistants look down on anyone bigger than a UK size 8. 

I was never much good at fashion. The party held with Maddie Grigg in the early 80s was the high point of my fashion sense, when I wore, in homage to Spandau Ballet, knickerbockers, a white frilly shirt and a head band. I had some truly hideous outfits in my 20's. A few examples:

This monstrosity (left) - jade green trousers & jacket with red shoes - was bought in Milton Keynes and worn to see David Bowie. I don't think I owned a pair of jeans at that time. I don't know what possessed me.

Even worse is this "track suit" horror - right - which was bought at one of those clothes parties that a friend of my mum's had.

What have been your fashion faux pas and successes?