Frumpy or fierce?

It seems that just about every sewing blogger and her mom has gone gaga over this Michael Kors dress from his Fall 2008 collection, and I am no exception.  Styled in rich menswear fabrics, or the most ladylike of floral prints, the dress is a prime example of sophisticated va-va-voom:

 

And of course, the exciting thing for those of us who are in possession of a pocketful of sewing skills is that this dress is available as a pattern in the form of Vogue 1117:

Hrmm.  To be honest, I really don’t like how the dress looks on the Vogue envelope. If not for the fact that I’ve seen the dress in other incarnations, I doubt I’d have looked twice at the pattern. What is going on here?  Granted, the model for the Vogue dress does not have a willowy runway model figure, but her figure is lovely nonetheless. I’ve seen the dress photographed on actress Kristin Davis, who is probably closer in size and shape to the envelope model than to the runway model, and it looks lovely on her as well.  Could it be that the model’s boyish haircut is not working with the dress? Is it because the dress isn’t shown with a belt? Or is it that the draft of the Vogue pattern is somehow more conservative?  I hope it’s not that, because I ordered it anyway. I’m counting on the belt to be the solution.

So, onto another question.  It was my first instinct to get a tweed or other such menswear fabric and make this as a dress for work.  But I’m realizing that I am in possession of a whole lot of classy little knee-length dresses for work, both purchased and made.  And then I discovered this Vera Wang Lavender Label floral brocade from Fabric.com:

What do you think?  I found some pictures of the actual Vera Wang Lavender Label dress for which this fabric was used, and the fabric really begs to be pleated and ruched. In that sense, the fabric might be a good fit for that pattern. But I’m still not sure… given that the Vogue pattern looks considerably less “fierce” than the Michael Kors original, and given that I’m not very va-va-voom anatomically to start with, will this floral frock look frumpy and grammy-ish (no offense to grammies!), or will it look sophisticated?  

In other words, will it be Mad Men floral dress:

or Queen mum floral dress?

What’s your advice?  Yay or nay on the print with the Vogue 1117 pattern?