OK - I'm sorry, to anyone I offended with my comment upthread.
This isn't intended as a thread hijack, it's intended as a bit of an explanation or food for thought.
Firstly, one should definitely separate "beautifully dressed, groomed, socially polished individual married to husband; at husband's workplace do" from "beautifully dressed, groomed, socially polished trophy being shown off by husband in order for him to gain ascendancy in the workplace". Both are intimidating socially. The first category has the advantage of being potentially supportive and pleasant. The second category might be less supportive or pleasant, for reasons discussed below.
Secondly, having separated out dress and social manner from motivation: is it actually wrong to say that some women do seem to "like" being sort of "trophies" for their boyfriends or husbands to show off?
When I say "like" I mean they derive self-worth from the compliments that come from their husbands and husbands' colleagues, when they conform to particular modes of behaviour. The self-worth is determined by other people's opinions and observations - this has the consequence that other people have freedom of choice to decide what's worthwhile and good, but these women don't ever get to choose (until they stop being trophies). This tends to make them extremely unsupportive of anyone who is potential competition.
Getting one's self-worth from men's compliments about [beauty, career, whatever] is very different from deriving self-worth from doing exactly the same [beauty, career, whatever] with a different motivation - e.g. finding it interesting, deriving personal identity from doing it well. The latter path means one can continue to operate autonomously even if some other people are better at [beauty, career, whatever].
I think this probably has something to do with traditional feminine socialization where women have been brought up to seek approval for conforming to what authority figures want from them, rather than thinking that what they do has intrinsic value that they are capable of judging without the need for others' observations.
Beyond the approval-seeking aspect of being a trophy, the actual behaviours that are praised can vary very widely. Some people seek approval for very traditional social behaviour - e.g. the usual 'trophy wife' description; others seek approval for having careers that their husbands approve of.
Thinking back 20-30 years in my life, what constituted a trophy was very different at different ages and in different contexts.
Aged about 15, I saw girls deriving self-worth from being game to provide whatever sexual services boys felt like demanding. The same girls, at school, might also be playing up to the high academic expectations of teachers and parents, desperately seeking the "well done, darling, your teacher must be so proud of you" pat on the head rather than thinking "this subject is so cool and interesting, I want to know more".
Aged about 19, the trophy girlfriends were the ones who could drink the boys' mates under the table; be louder, ruder and more obnoxious when drunk than the boys; and still scrub up in a way the boys approved of (fnarr, fnarr, hourglass hand waving) at a formal dinner [ 
I think I went to a rather unsophisticated and sexist university]. Many of the girls I knew who did it saw all this as worthwhile because it meant boys approved of them. By that age many of them were old enough to see that the behaviours were not necessarily intrinsically worthwhile, but they did them anyway because of the approval from the boys.
A small proportion of those girls have gone on to become traditional trophy wives who dress nicely, are socially gracious, are unopinionated; who find the worth in what they're doing when they're complimented on their dress and social skills; and who worry endlessly about whether their husbands are going to find someone else who is younger, more beautiful, and more interesting. They tear other women to shreds for being ugly, ungracious, too opinionated and outspoken, not making an effort to be likeable, etc. Their model of self-worth is one where only the husband gets to decide that anything has intrinsic value, and the criteria of worth are ones where it's almost impossible to stay ahead of the game.
A slightly larger proportion of the girls i knew at 15/19 have gone on to become wives who needily seek approval from husbands/male colleagues in a similar way about their career achievements; and who worry that their husband might run away with someone else who is better at her career. They're (some of) the women who shit only on other women and suck up only to men in the workplace.
Thankfully, by far the greatest proportion of girls I knew at 15/19 have gone on to run their own lives and not be someone else's trophy. Many of them are happily married. Some of them quite enjoy being in a fairly traditional 1950s role of stay-at-home mother. Some of them like to dress beautifully because it gives them pleasure personally. Some of them like having a career at which they can do well. The difference from the trophy wives is that they themselves get to determine whether what they're doing is worthwhile or not - not their husbands.
I was an academic's trophy academic daughter, with occasional appearances as a traditional trophy wife's trophy beautiful daughter. I was a trophy girlfriend in terms of appearance and career in my early 20s. Then I moved somewhere full of people who'd been told all their lives that they were exceptional and brilliant and beautiful. Many of them were much more exceptional and brilliant and beautiful than I was, and I was no longer even faintly desirable on any level - because other people were just getting on with their own brilliant lives rather than being available to shore up my self-confidence by constantly providing reassurance and compliments. I went to all sorts of lengths to try to regain my trophy status, for a few years, looking more and more like a desperate teenager. Eventually I hit rock-bottom despair and realised I needed to build my own life rather than one as a trophy. It's in progress.
My mother and sister have been in the fortunate or unfortunate position, all their lives, of being traditional 1950s trophy wives, with no reason to ever question their trophy-ness. They've never had to build their lives as themselves rather than as objects of their husbands' desire. It also means that they've never been released from the mental tyranny of constantly looking over their shoulders in case there's a younger, more beautiful, more socially gracious girl coming up behind them to steal their husbands' attention. They're unreasonably censorious about other women's appearances, housekeeping and social skills; in particular, mine. I still care about the fact they're like that, because it's difficult to get away from caring about one's family - but I can see how much more fun my life is than theirs.
That's what was running through my mind when I made the comment above.
OK, back to discussing how to deal with the dress requirements of an occasion where the men work and the wives have time and money to be very groomed and polished, whatever their motivations.