7 Brands You Will Love If You’re A Dress Person
… and quite possibly if you’re NOT a dress person
by The Candidly Team
Picking out a dress is soooo much harder than it should be.
Sure, dresses feel like they should be the funnest thing we shop for, being associated with “dressing up” and festive occasions. And vacations. And weekends. And also just wearing ONE single thing that makes us look cute without having to worry about balancing tops and bottoms and 4 other layers.
Dresses should be the easy choice. The joyful choice. But they are not.
And this is why: a dress in under a TON of obligations.
#1) It must fit our specific body in 18 correct ways for us to feel comfortable in it. Supporting our chests, masking our pooches, smoothing our thighs, covering our legs, showing our legs etc. etc. Whatever our personal checklist may be, we’re already tired just thinking about it.
#2) It has to be absolutely lovely all by itself. This sounds obvious, but the entire point of a dress is to excite us and make us feel prettier in it. Otherwise, what are we even doing here?
Finding dresses that fit, flatter, and feel as good as they look is a seemingly endless quest. It’s also a task that we, as mostly over-40 women, have been up to for decades. And today, we’re here to report that we’re finally in a place where we feel like we’ve unearthed enough treasures to share with the world - you, namely.
And not just treasures as in individual dresses, but entire brands that are making entire collections of dresses that work beautifully on non-model women. These are the brands that we turn to on repeat any given season for any given occasion in order to find something worthy of our sky-high standards.
Each one has their own special reasons for making this list, and here’s what they are:
We first stumbled upon Marcella when we tried their Clara dress, which was maybe the most infallibly flattering everyday dress we’d ever slipped on. But it turned out to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of modern yet timeless dresses that we actually want to wear on a daily (or nightly) basis. And the brand seems to turn these dresses out like it’s nothing. We think the magic comes from them understanding the natural curves of our bodies that many designers bizarrely miss. Marcella’s dresses smartly combine stretchy, smoothing materials with chic, flattering cuts, so all our collective parts feel very comfortable in them. Almost all their styles size up to XXXL, and they cost like half of what many designers are charging for the same quality.
You know those jaw-dropping party dresses we low-key lust after but are never confident enough to pounce on because of some shitty way we see our bodies? Well, Bardot makes such dresses but then adds these smart little details that help sort of push us over the edge in terms of confidence. Things like a little more space in the skirt or some ruching round our waists. They’re giving us an inroads into wearing our dream dresses, which we think is pretty exciting.
We’ve been wowed by the quality of pretty much everything we’ve tried from Z Supply. But the way they make dresses is, again, extremely thoughtful in terms of how we want/ need our clothes to fit. If it’s strapless, the chest is supportive enough to skip a bra. For real. Same goes for a cut-out. They’re the kind of dresses we feel very good in even when we’re bloated or feeling blah. Each one is an outfit unto itself, so we don’t have to think about getting dressed. And they all sort of feel like we’re still in lounge clothes.
Every single dress from Farm Rio feels like we’ve just showered off the sand and are getting dressed for dinner on some cobblestoned street. Their prints just outright take our breath away but the cuts are incredibly easy to wear. They’re the kind of dresses that do all the work for us. Just pull back your wet hair, add a bit of dewy, “clean girl” makeup, slip one on, and you’re your most beautiful self.
We don’t want our dresses to be cheap, flimsy garbage. But we also don’t want them to be fussy and constricting and to feel like all we should be doing in them is walking down a runway. Faithfull dresses do feel very nice and luxe and like they’ve been stitched together by a tailor who took your exact measurements, but they’re also just comfortable. Like leisurely clothes we want to wear every day. The bonus is that we get to look completely chic and put together in the process.
For those of us with a thicker waist, it’s really easy to give up on the idea of wearing something sleek with clean lines, because we’d much rather have some space and coverage. But Tuckernuck is unique in how they’re making dresses that have classic shapes that feel very chic and graceful and even a little French, but we still have room to blessedly breathe. Plus, the size range is incredible.
Realistically, where occasion dresses are concerned, we’re going to turn to black like 9 times out of 10. But that doesn’t mean we want to be boring, especially not when it comes to Mara Hoffman, the queen of the elevated LBD. The fit and proportions and ideas are all beyond. Each dress is honestly just wearable art and any one of them could easily be your favorite dress you own. Of. All. Time.
At The Candidly, we try a lot of stuff so you don’t have to. We only recommend things we truly love, and that we think you’ll love, too. All products are chosen independently by our creative team, and all details reflect the price and availability of products at the time of publication. If you buy something we link to, The Candidly may earn a commission.
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