The Little Black Dress Is Back (and This One Is $45)
Everyone's searching for a dress right now. Here's the one worth buying this week, plus the pieces that make it look like more money than you spent.
Search anything on this site long enough and one word keeps coming up: dress. Not "summer dress" or "going-out dress." Just dress. Which tells me most of us are looking for the same thing — one piece you can pull on, add a shoe to, and stop thinking about.
So here it is, plus the things I'd wear with it.
The dress
The Black Polka Dot Lace Trim Sasha Mini Shift Dress from Nobody's Child is $45, down from $89. It's a shift, so it skims instead of clinging — which is the whole point of a summer dress that has to survive a bus, a bar and someone's terrible garden party. The polka dot keeps it from reading like a school uniform. The lace trim keeps it from reading plain.
Wear it with flat sandals in the daytime and it's a Tuesday. Wear it with a big boot at night and it's an outfit. It's short and airy and pretty, which is exactly the mood right now — the babydoll silhouette that Chloé, Miu Miu and Ulla Johnson all showed for spring is the same idea, just at a price that doesn't require a conversation with yourself.
Buy it. That's the whole review.
What to put on your feet
The Nico Fully Embellished Ankle Boots in Multi are $182.99, down from $304.99. These are not a sensible purchase and I'm not going to pretend they are. They're a fully crystalled ankle boot and they will do the entire job of an outfit by themselves.
The move is contrast: a plain dark dress on top, something loud and shiny at the bottom. If everything you own is quiet, this is the one thing that shouldn't be. If you already own three pairs of party shoes, skip it — this is a want, not a need, and I'd rather you knew that.
The cheap thing that does the most
The Aruba Cruise Bracelet in White is $13.20, down from $22. Thirteen dollars. Stack it with whatever you already wear and it looks like you thought about your wrist, which is the sort of small thing people register without knowing why.
This is the category I'd spend in this summer generally — the pretty, tactile, slightly handmade stuff. Straw bags, silk scarves knotted through a belt loop or tied around a bag handle, small white beads. It's where a small amount of money buys the most visible difference.
If you have real money to spend
The Viscose Suiting Midi Trouser Skirt from Tibi is $323, down from $645. It's a proper grown-up piece — suiting fabric, midi length, cut like a trouser rather than a skirt, which is exactly the direction everything is going right now: loose, trouser-ish, more volume, less fitted. If white wide-leg denim is the easy version of that idea, this is the expensive one.
It's still $323. Only buy it if you'll wear it fifty times, and you will only wear it fifty times if you have somewhere to wear it. Be honest with yourself.
One more, for the top of your head
The Casquette Beige Rivet Ami De Coeur en Nylon from Ami Paris is $98, down from $140. A beige cap is the least interesting sentence I'll write today and also the item I'd get the most use out of. Unwashed hair, sunny day, dress and boots. Done.
