If I want to write about something for this column, I have to wear it in the accompanying picture. This constrains, inevitably, the gene pool of topics. It’s not that I don’t have any thoughts on swimwear, for instance, it’s just that – well, you get the picture. Or rather, you don’t.
It also means that if I want to talk the talk, I have to walk the walk. Quite literally, across a studio, in front of a shoot team whose facial expressions I have come to analyse the way a poker player learns the tics and tells of the other players in a regular Friday night game. It is instructive, and humbling, and a reminder time and time again that you never know what will work until you actually try it on.
Over this long, hot summer I spotted woman after woman looking cool and composed in floaty white dresses, and I started to think that I should be wearing floaty white dresses, and by extension that you should, too. In a floaty white dress I am on a shady veranda, drinking an iced tea, which is an appealing place to be. That there is an underbelly to this image – from the Preaker women in Amy Adams’s drama Sharp Objects, to Picnic At Hanging Rock – only makes it all the more atmospheric. So I bought an off-white cheesecloth maxi skirt and wore it with a white cotton tank and felt as if I had walked the walk enough to write a column about the look.
And then I put on an actual floaty white dress for this photo and it dawned on me that separates is one thing but the dress is a harder look to pull off. I look as if I am sleepwalking, but it is too late to back out. My first instinct is to try a sleeveless version. Showing a bit of skin often helps when a look is a bit bloodless, which is why politicians roll their shirtsleeves up to seem more real. But in this instance, it doesn’t help: too much bare skin combined with the nightgown-vibes of white broderie anglaise make me look and feel exposed and vulnerable, which is not the idea at all.
Instead, as so often, it comes down to accessories. An initial experiment is to throw lots of jewellery on, but I just look as if I have had too much rosé with paella at lunch on holiday and done overenthusiastic shopping at the boho-dresses-and-chunky-jewellery stall. No, the answer is the right shoes. A pair of coloured shoes – plus a hemline that is ankle-length rather than floor-length, so you can see the shoes and a couple of inches of live human – and the nightgown dress springs to life.
• Jess wears dress, £95, frenchconnection.com. Heels, £275, lkbennett.com.
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Johanni Nel at S Management.
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