Spring is here. It’s official: the spring equinox, which marks the first day of astronomical spring, falls on 20 March. I’m wearing a dress to celebrate. We haven’t quite arrived at the roaring 20s flapper dress moment yet. The tea dress, with its keep-calm-and-carry-on 1940s vibes, feels more appropriate. Not only because it is having a fashion renaissance, with a strong Paris fashion week showing, but because it is the kind of dress you might be able to wear for a six-person picnic in the not-too-distant future.
A tea dress instantly makes you look as if you have made an effort, while being extremely easy to wear. It is somewhere between tight and baggy; somewhere between short and long. There is often a print – flowers, polka dots, cherries, that sort of thing. It usually has sleeves, and a deepish V neckline.
The retro mood of the tea dress is part of its charm, but it is probably best to avoid overly literal styling. I am not a fan of vintage style when it gets twee and cosplay adjacent. Wear a tea dress with 40s sandals and red lipstick, and you run the risk of looking like an extra in a Sunday night Miss Marple drama. It is better, as we are constantly reminded, to be driven by data than by dates.
Here, then, is the most up-to-date evidence. On Celine’s spring catwalk, tea dresses were worn with baseball caps, cardigans and stompy ankle boots. For Coach’s spring lookbook, Kate Moss wore a tea dress with pool slides. These looks channel the chipper, can-do spirit of the tea dress, without the full Vera Lynn soundtrack. Wear this dress to the park with sunglasses and a backpack. If you fancy dressing up at home, in heels, forget historical accuracy and go for pointy toes rather than round ones. If you wear a cardigan, make it the chunky type with slouchy pockets, rather than a neatly fitted one with pearl buttons.
There is one more, very important reason why the tea dress could be the dress to add to your wardrobe: you can find one secondhand just as easily as you can on the high street. Having been around the block a few times, it is one of the best represented dress styles on most vintage racks. Which, in these sustainably minded times, makes it very now indeed.
• Jess wears dress, from a selection, ghost.co.uk. Shoes, her own
• The photograph on this column was changed on 20 March 2021 as the wrong image had been used.
