The Curtain Rose

So, I actually really like the rose in the center of the bust. Yes, it looks a lot like 4th of July bunting. But still, it actually kind of works for me.



Am I the only one, however, who totally thinks the ruffles down the front look like curtains? I wouldn't be shocked if, inside the dress, there's a rigging system that allows you to open and close the skirt as needed.

J.Crew Strapless Chambray Wild Rose Dress - $98

Chin Up

Look, I'm not a designer. I know I'm not a designer. I've never made any claims to the contrary. I am secure in the knowledge that, if you handed me a sketchpad, I would make the most boring dresses in the world. Sure, I'd love them, but they'd be really, really boring.



However.

This is just a thought, but ... if your model has to strain to extend her neck so that she isn't poked in the face with the giant bow attached to her hip, maybe - just maybe - you should make the bow a little smaller.

I'm just throwing that out there.

Derek Lam Bow Know Bustier Dress - $1,650

ModCloth Deserves Some Praise

I was weeding through my many, many tabs tonight, because even Chrome can't handle the number of pages I have open. And, as I sorted through them, I realized something: half of the tabs were for ModCloth's dresses. I realized, I've barely looked at the rest of the site lately, because I've been so absorbed with their dress section. But here's the thing: for all of the awful dresses I've posted, for all the misplaced peplums and mottled sequins, the majority of the dresses are great.

So, in the hopes that others will get to buy the dresses and twirl around feeling pretty, I'm posting some of my favorites (I'm on a shopping embargo, due to not being particularly employed, so I can't buy their entire dress section).

Yeah, there's not a lot of cutting remarks and sarcasm, but there are pretty dresses after the jump.

Fandemonium!

The problem I've always had with Shelli Segal is that she tries really hard, and it shows. It always makes me kind of sad to see someone put in that kind of effort and consistently fail. It's hard to really hold it against them.

But somehow, I'll manage.

Behold, the fan dress. A dress where the skirt is decorated with those construction paper fans you would make in grade school. Looking at this skirt, I can't help but imagine a sweatshop full of Hawthorne Elementary fourth graders, forced to make fans until their fingers bleed.

This could just be my wanting to throw Shelli a bone, but I don't think I'd hate the dress if the back were a little longer than the front, and it only had fans in the back, like tail feathers. Of course, it could very well be that I would have posted that dress on here anyway, but in my head, it seems marginally better.

And even if she hadn't gone full-plumage, she could have at the very least made the hemline match up with the fans to make a scalloped pattern, rather than having the fans just glued onto your standard skirt. But that's the fatal flaw of this dress: she somehow manages to go all-out to the point of excess, while simultaneously not taking enough of a risk to actually make the dress interesting. So instead, you're just left with a dress where the bottom half is covered in stiff, pointy-edged fans.

Laundry by Shelli Segal Short Strapless Pleated Fan Taffeta Cocktail Dress - $365

Something Old, Something Used

The big complaint about wedding dresses often is that you'll only wear it once, and there's no way to reuse it.



This dress won't help you with that. It will, however, help you if you want to look like you're reusing the table cloths from your wedding.

I'm trying to figure out under which circumstances this dress would be flattering. If there weren't the gathered tiering, and it just poufed out stiffly, it might actually be appealing in a retro way. But this just is droopy and sack-like, while still adding too much volume to actually be a sack.

So, as I said in the beginning, it looks like you're either reusing the table clothes from your wedding, or you're going to look like a centerpiece from that wedding. Just keep that in mind when people start asking you where you got that - they're not asking for the dress's designer, they're asking for the event planner.

ModCloth Auld Lang Syne Dress - $59.99

Costume Ideas #13: The Rainbow Connection

Do you live in L.A.? Are you planning on going to the West Hollywood Halloween Parade?

Do you want to be wildly popular?

Wear this dress and a "No on Prop 8" button.

Modcloth Prism Dress - $47.99

Strapless No More

As a top-heavy girl (man, a lot of my posts revolve around my boobs), I rarely get to wear a strapless dress. Shoshanna is the only designer out there who is able to create enough scaffolding to keep my rack in check.

So, I do understand the difficulty of strapless dresses, and why one might create this hybrid creature:



I've been seeing these everywhere - this tank/strapless dress fusion. And while part of me kind of likes it, because they occasionally do look sort of funky, the fact that it's omnipresent sort of defeats the purpose. You're not, theoretically, trying to look like you're layering a tank and a strapless dress in a feat of sartorial ingenuity. Instead, you're buying a dress from Forever 21 with a tank built in. It's like how, five years ago, those sweaters with the sewn-in collars were popular. Only worse, because at least those sweater hybrids solved a real problem: layering a button-down and a sweater is tricky. But I don't get any sense of functionality with the tank/strapless hybrid.

And, in fact, I think this dress could almost border on cute if it just had its own tank straps. I hate the ruching around the bust - it always ends up looking like a cheap 80's prom dress, when paired with that heart neckline. But I love the multiple hems, especially with the metallic fabric. If you could keep them hem and create a tank or boatneck style top, this dress would end up in my closet, rather than on my blog.

Oh, Forever 21. When will you learn that chymera clothing only ends in tears?

Forever 21 Belted Contrast-Tiered Dress - $46