You're headed in the right direction. You're hitting some walls, but that's to be expected. Don't give up. You're going to keep hitting them, so come to terms with it. Learn to enjoy the little spurts of learning and small advances. And expect to hit more walls, that's how learning works! First, don't use the same base for…
Heres the shaded wireframes of low poly, sorry for bad quality, I couldn't manage to do a render and keep the wireframe on it (without the whole thing being see through so I'mm using the snipping tool on windows. (also included Reference photo if that helps) For the lace detail, I'm not sure how the alpha thing would work…