The Floral Affair
Some styles of clothing benefit from a dash of sass. Take, for example, the floral gown.
In the summer, I Love me a floral dress. But who doesn’t? It’s is a timeless classic. Women covered in daisies and roses, in blowsy painterly blossoms, or carpeted in ditsy sprigs can be found in any office, university, or park.
But it’s not a platform sandal or hoop earrings that go best with a floral outfit. It’s a tongue that’s tucked inside one’s cheek.
The difference between appearing like a Sally Rooney character off to a steamy assignment in the park and looking like the Countess of Wessex preparing to open a garden with the right flora.
The implications of wearing a floral dress are a little more subtle. However, seeing around almost in almost every country you will find a floral dress in the summer wardrobe. It is indeed fashion that can bring us together. But one needs to do it right.
As when you or I wear a floral dress, it only takes a tiny shift in energy to signal that you’re nodding to homemade-jam-at-the-fete rather than dressed for the occasion.
It doesn’t matter how old you are if you want to look trendy in florals. Consider 100-year-old fashion innovator Iris Apfel, who was recently pictured wearing a riot of yellow and purple with multicolored pansies, a string of beads the size of eggs, thick bangles, and her trademark owl-eye sunglasses.
But it’s undeniable that the further one gets from having plausible Rooney main-character energy – which is exactly what we’re going for in our floral dresses, right? – the more it’s necessary to emphasize that a flowery calf-length dress is being worn in a spirit of enjoyable but lighthearted nostalgia rather than because we’re stuck in a period-drama time warp.
