The perfect black day dress

Image: Eva K Salvi. This blogpost contains some affiliate links.

I’ve probably gone on about my mourning for this Cos dress for way too long (after accidentally burning half the front off with an iron!). I have saves on seraches on Vinted, watchlists on eBay and signed up to secondhand sites, even have Curate & Rotate on the look out for it.

Truth be told, not only would I like to rebuy it, I’d also like to size up (the elastic sleeves wore a bit tight after a long day), so it’s not as straightforward as repurchasing and a size medium seems much harder to come by….! Anyway, I decided in the meantime to find a replacement on the High Street.

Dress: £49.99, Zara

And it seems that a lot of you are on the same kind of search as I have received so many links and DMs to the ‘perfect’ black day dress. So this is actually almost entirely crowdsourced content. For me, I am after a 100% cotton dress, light and easy to wear and loose fitting, pockets, sleeves, and it needs to look good with chunky shoes/trainers/sandals (that I live in over the spring and summer months).

To help edit this post I have avoided frills, broderie anglaise and ruffles. This style is particularly utiliatrian, simple and some could say boring. But the styling will be in the accessories.

I have chosen a few below that deviate slightly, as understand not every will be on the exact same hunt as me…..these are the ones that have made my hotlist:

Dress: £65, Kin at John Lewis

100% cotton (the top is jersey, the bottom poplin) and it does have pockets. A simple, easy dress – I love how they’ve styled it with boots to show its versatility, too.

Contrast panel dress: £79, Cos Pleated dress: £79, Cos

The left dress is a longer version of the Kin dress with pockets. I always find that the fit and volume of Cos dresses are always so on point. The dress on the right is almost none of my dress criteria (besides pockets!) but I love it, so added it. I love the simplicity of it, an Issey Miyake-esque creation which would look great from black tie events (not that I ever go to those!) to city wandering.

Linen blend dress: £39.90, Uniqlo 100% cotton dress: £24.90, Uniqlo

I looked at this linen dress a lot on Uniqlo, but the shirring put me off (I find shirring on dresses so restrictive and tends to push my belly out underneath which doesn’t feel great). I have since been told that the shirring is only on the back, so have added it in as have heard such good reviews. The t-shirt dress is here because it is 100% cotton, is a great price and has pockets – for me this would be the perfect travel dress.

Cotton dress: £89, Arket

The volume! A big fan of this dress and really think this is a dress that will last and last in your wardrobe.

The Longlist

Other brands to look at (and recommended to me!) are Mother of Pearl Handmade (her handmade linen dresses!), Muthahood (made from a more sustainable type of viscose) and Lucy and Yak (organic cotton) and Boden for their t-shirt dress.