By Karen Stephen FORGET the posh frocks and designer suits, the best way to break the ice at any party is to turn up in fancy dress. Everyone loves dressing up - French maid, policeman, Star Wars character, nurse or pirate - and a fancy dress party is the perfect venue for doing so. However what happens if you've left choosing your outfit too late?

We've all been there. A last minute invitation, or you've been caught up in the Christmas rush and been too busy to plan an outfit.

Then, when you finally get around to it, all that's left in the shop is some limp material meant to resemble an Indian squaw's garb. Not exactly the image you had in mind.

But never fear, the BEN is here. We dug deep into our wardrobes and pulled out those fashion mistakes of yore to make our own fancy dress outfits (if the cast from Corrie can do it for their Millennium party, so can we).

We transformed our male model into international man of mystery, Austin Powers - "yeah baby" - and our female model became a 70s disco diva.

All that was needed was a little imagination. And as an added bonus, we did it on a shoestring!

Mike O'Rourke is a special publications assistant at the BEN but for a couple of hours we transformed him into Austin Powers.

All it took was a blue velvet jacket, a pair of black trousers and a white frilly blouse. The finishing touches were a pair of black glasses and a black wig - the wig was the only item we paid for, it cost £12.99.

Our disco diva is really Angelina Aspinall, the BEN's special publications editor. To make Angelina's outfit we used cream lacy trousers, worn over a rather fetching pair of orange and black striped tights.

Then we added a gold lurex shirt, sandals covered in tin foil and a brightly-coloured foil wig.

We slapped lots of glitter onto her face, threw some gold tinsel round her neck and, hey presto, she was ready to hit the dance floor!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.