I love buying summer dresses, because they remind me of being on holiday. So I am always on the lookout for ways to adapt them, since I have ended up with a warm-weather wardrobe stuck on the wrong latitude.
Making summer clothes work year-round is not as easy as it sounds. Theoretically, you just put on a summer dress and then layer a cardigan on top. But no, doesn’t work. Layering done like that looks like a compromise, not an outfit. Clothes have to look deliberate to look dynamic.
But, look! We have here a bona fide spring trend which can be rustled up by bringing together two pieces which I am pretty sure you already have in your wardrobe. First, a spaghetti-strap dress. (I have about 20. Please tell me you have at least one, or I will feel even more ridiculous.) Second, a polo neck.
All you do, then, is put these two pieces on in what feels like the wrong order. The little strappy number goes over the polo neck, not under it. It’s a look that has formed at the point where two trends meet: the 90s revival, which has brought spaghetti-strap dresses and grunge layering back, and the obsession with polo necks, which at this rate are going to be the defining item of the decade.
Spaghetti-strap dresses layered over crew neck T-shirts were huge in the 90s. Magazines were endlessly exhorting us to “simply” layer a dress over a classic white T-shirt. And it always looked amazing on people like Rosemary Ferguson, who would wear it with a messy bun and Converse, and look knockout. But it never worked on me at all. The proportions were all wrong, and the T-shirt always rucked up in the wrong places and the whole thing was just ungainly, somehow.
So I didn’t have high hopes for the polo neck update of the look. But it turns out the high neck gives a more elegant shape than a T-shirt did, while the clingy shape of the polo neck makes the silhouette less clumsy than with a loose cotton T-shirt. Two trends, one new look; no shopping.
• Jess wears polo neck, £62, gudrunsjoden.com. Denim dress, £95, frenchconnection.com. Platforms, £139, senso.com.
Styling: Melamnie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management.
