This season, if you want to do feminine and graceful, you wear trousers (wide-legged, extra-long) and if you want to look tough and all-action, you wear a dress. No, you heard me right. Wait, you got the memo about this being the age of gender fluidity, right?
This, as a result, is a season when women who don’t necessarily normally do dresses can do dresses. I’m going to go with “tomboy dress” as a phrase. Tomboy dresses can be sporty like this one, fastened with oversized ringpulls instead of buttons, or drawstrings instead of sash belts. These are not so much a new take on the dress, as the final frontier of athleisure. The aesthetic of the gym, having already attained ultimate wardrobe-creep by coming to define pre-6pm wear on non-working days, now has designs on what you wear to work.
But there is another option, too. Demure floral dresses have long been a fashion no man’s land. The default choice of the slightly wan wedding guest, and therefore a look that no one who considers herself to have a little bit of an edge – women like us, in other words – would touch with a bargepole. Now, they are being rediscovered and worn in a way that is more indie-kid than Duchess of Cambridge, with chunky studded belts and ankle boots, and a streamlined, grownup line that makes them modern. (Think a black polo neck layered under a dress, rather than a cardigan on top of it.)
The dress has been liberated from girliness. Sporty details give energy to simple shapes, while a sweet dress is toughened up with biker boots and a ribbed knit. If the high-maintenance elegance of this season’s trousers has got you on the run (pale pink wide legged crepe pants are divine, but not exactly the practical option) a dress is this season’s more down-to-earth alternative. There’s even a failsafe test. Does it have pockets? This matters: for practical reasons, and for what-to-do-with-your-hands reasons. If the answer’s yes, that’s your dress.
• Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management. Jess wears dress, £29.99, zara.com. Sandals, £250, lkbennett.com.
