A radical suggestion: can we have some more dresses with sleeves?
hy are summer dresses with W sleeves more elusive than a Trump with understated follicles? It’s not as if we don’t go through this every summer. Every summer.
Around now, a survey somewhere is being conducted that will prove that almost every woman on the planet hates her arms. And every summer we will witness another drought of dresses with sleeves. Also, not entirely unrelated, come sale time, there will be a mighty dumping of dresses without sleeves, of dresses with strippy-strappy effects and – this summer’s special torture – of off-theshoulder peasant dresses.
I don’t wish to stray into the valley of despondency and hating your body, because there are enough religious bigots out there telling women to cover up every millimetre of their flesh without fashion writers joining the fray. But even if your arms make Michelle Obama’s look sloppy, there are other reasons for wanting a summer dress with (at least) short sleeves. The British summer, for instance, or over-zealous American airconditioning, or sightseeing around ancient churches, mosques and some of our prissier workplaces, or café cruising in Andalusia in May…
If you’ve experienced any of the above, you will have empirical evidence that summer dresses which don’t leave half your back or front exposed to the sun or to sudden chilly gusts are not a self-contradicting freakery, but a necessity.
You can find formal, slightly dull dresses with sleeves. You can find evening dresses with sleeves. In some stores, you can’t move for the Statement Sleeve – but wearing them limits the use of your hands and will result in you tripping over the hem of your cuff.
The kind of sleeved frock you can glide across a piazza in, looking effortlessly effortless, or a frock that can take you from yacht to boho wedding (shamelessly wide-of-the-mark lifestyle fantasising is the only way to get through a British summer), are so thin on the ground that one woman, Sophie Dundas, took matters in hand.
An inveterate fabric collector (she began her career at Sotheby’s in 19th-century art), she sources printed silkcottons and chiffons in Hoi An, Vietnam, and has them made into (sleeved) dresses by a small co-operative in Hanoi. There are four styles – The Rosie is for fuller figures, The Flora for more gamine types. They can be styled traditionally, with plaited leather Ralph Lauren-style belts and boots, spruced up with heels and a velvet jacket (she has designed those, too, specifically to work with the dresses) or more edgily with trainers (there are shades of Vetements in some of her spriggy prints). Since she can never source more than 60m of any fabric, you won’t see scores of the same dress. That and the quality makes them a steal, at £145-£175 (sophiedundasclothing on Instagram; sophiedundas@gmail.com; 07887 995910).
Others doing sleeved dresses are seeing them fly – John Lewis reports that sales are up this year. Elsewhere, look for slim, neat sleeves (chiffon, lace and silk are all good in this respect) that will slip easily beneath a lightweight blazer, which is a much more youthful and chic cover-up than mumsy cardigans… and enjoy and treasure these frocks. They’re not going out of style any time soon.