WINTER WHITES

That summertime staple – the little white dress – makes the leap to the cooler months.

Romance was once the domain of summer. Now the floating, ethereally enticing white dress beckons in the cooler months. How? With the right kind of style sleight. Dotting the pre-fall runways and presentations of designers from Burberry to Chloé and Christian Dior were the tricks to convert it to winter material. Boots were the almost universal switch technique, but for the more finessed approach adopt a neck scarf or add a layered-beneath long-sleeved top. The common factor: an edge. White, as simple as it is, is imbued with deep symbolic meaning, like youthful innocence, but so too openness and the awakening that comes with growing up, as Jane Birkin’s risqué take at the Paris Gala in 1969 proved so well.