Take a minute to think about your most prized wardrobe possession. Your absolute favourite piece, the one which makes you feels as beautiful as Cinderella, as sexy as Marilyn, and as sophisticated as Audrey. This item fits like a glove, covers the lumps you don’t like, shows off the bits you do and is the first thing you reach for on any big night out or first date. Chances are, if there was a fire in your house, this would be on your top 10 list of things to save. Chances are you’ll keep it forever whether you grow out of it or not. Chances are, this irreplaceable piece of fashion magic is a dress.
I love dresses. For a start, they are the one thing that we women can wear that the less fair sex really can’t. David may have sported nail polish and a skirt in his earlier Brand Beckham days, but we are still as yet to see him in a flouncy frock. And once you take Grayson Perry and Jodie Harsh out of the equation, dresses are pretty much exclusively planted in the female domain.
And dresses are super easy to wear, with no need to consider outfit building—for summer, all you need is a pair of flip flops to accessorise, and for winter, fling on a pair of tights and boots and you’re good to go. The dress’ myriad incarnations mean you can pick the exact shape to fit your body, the exact colour to perfectly set off your skin tone and the one which exactly fits your budget.
Dresses have achieved something of a new-found respect since the turn of the 21st century. While the outfit of an off-duty 20-something in the Nineties might have been a pair of bootcut jeans and a fitted blazer, the invention of fast fashion and the high street’s ability to recreate catwalk pieces down to a lawsuit-free copycat T within a couple of months has meant that suddenly all those statement dresses fashionistas have always coveted are out there for 20 quid from New Look.
Plus there’s the easy iconography of the frock. Not since Chanel’s LBD have dresses been used as such instant indicators of style and/or money, from Jenny from the Block’s slashed to the waist Hawaiian Versace kaftan, Lily Allen’s poufy prom and trainers combos to Liz and her safety pins – dresses have launched a thousand A-list careers.
In case you can’t tell, I am an emphatic supporter of the dress, and when I decided it was about time, as a fashion journalist, to get myself my own sartorial blog, the dress seemed a good focal point for me. My wardrobe is filled to bursting with dresses, from high street to designer, size 4s to 14s, charity to vintage, my mother’s Eighties castoffs, bridesmaid dresses and a few oversized T-shirts thrown in for good measure.
And so The Frock Dress Monster was born. Not one to do anything by halves, I was inspired by big hitting outfit-a-day blog What Katie Wore, and thought maybe I could do something similar with my frocks. Starting with a collection of 65 dresses, that left me 300 to find to fulfil my quota of a dress a day for a whole year. So far I have bought, borrowed and begged for friends’ cast offs, been lent designerwear and even have a made to measure prom frock on its way. 365 dresses? A piece of super fashionable cake.
To follow Laura’s challenge, go here.
Great piece
The good thing about dresses in winter is tights. I’m always glad when the British “summer” ends so I can drag out the black opaques.