It?s rare I write about clothes these days, but I am so excited by this dress that I had to slam fingers to keyboard. I?m excited because it?s from New Look, a store I usually avoid like the plague because I assume it?s full of girls barely out of the My Little Pony stage. I assume I?ll feel ancient, and annoyed by the crowds, and appalled by the length of everything’s hemline, and have to queue for three months at the till. And so I never go in. And I still haven?t. I found this online after a friend pointed me towards New Look?s bloody fantastic midi dresses. You see, I have a thing about midi. It is the perfect sweet spot between feeling unsophisticated in a mini, and like a Cath Kidston wigwam in a maxi (I have nothing against maxis on others. They can be fabulous. I am just tiny and look immediately like I did aged four, in my St David?s Day Welsh costume. Only less cool, now I think about it). Midi is such a chic length on any height. On shorties, it covers the knees so no one really knows how high up they are and consequently, how long one?s legs might actually be underneath the fabric. The same applies to tall girls – it seems to level us all out a bit.
Anyway, not any old midi will do. I have standard requirements for all dresses. I must have sleeves, always. If there is to be a waist seam (as opposed to none on a nice tunic or smock), then it must be slightly above my real waist, where I?m thinnest, so as to flatter my shape and crucially, allowing ...