After a few months off work, I am starting a new job in finance but my office clothes look tired. I dread the morning nightmare of finding matching clothes and would love to keep things simple with chic dresses. I’m 25 and slim but slightly pear-shaped, so clingy jersey dresses do me no favours. I would love something fairly structured but still pretty and young. Can you suggest anything, preferably under £150?
Strange to relate, the shops are already beginning to fill up with desirable dresses of every kind. I remember bleating two years ago that, Issa and Diane von Furstenberg apart, few labels were giving us dresses, but since then they seem to be flooding the market. This season in particular there are lots of the sort of crisp dresses that make better office wear than all those floaty bits of chiffon of a few years ago.
Unfortunately, the best are expensive. Nina Ricci, for instance, has the most perfect office dress that I’ve come across in a long time. It’s in a steel-grey silk/cotton mix with three-quarter sleeves and is almost like a shirt-dress but has some intricate ruching in the middle. Yet at £624 (from Harvey Nichols) it falls into the investment-dressing class.
If you’re going to work in the financial world, after you’ve had a few pay cheques perhaps you should think more of buying some investment pieces and less about buying items that cost £150 and less.
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However, until the money starts rolling in there are cheaper options, though few below £150. Marc by Marc Jacobs has an adorable palest pink-and-black-silk floral dress for £260 which, though very feminine, would look good in an office and divine for after work. Check it out on www.net-a-porter.com.
A good label for reasonable prices is Day Birger & Mikkelsen (020-7267 8822), a Danish company. Much of it is too spangled or chiffony for the office, but I have found a simple black dress for £165. In winter, team it with a cardigan (Marks & Spencer has some great ones in cashmere) or jacket. In summer, wear it on its own.
David Downton has drawn a dress in crisp orange cotton by Betty Jackson — I like it because it combines a look of efficiency with something a bit feminine in the lacy hem. It’s not cheap at £499 but would need little dressing-up and could go from office to holiday perfectly happily.
Margaret Howell (020-7009 9009) is a good label for those who like a touch of the crisply efficient Miss Moneypenny look. She has a great grey wrap dress that can be worn on its own or with vests underneath. At £345 it will earn its keep time and again.
Paul & Joe’s turquoise cotton dress with a fashionable slightly Forties look (it’s the V-neck and those sleeves) is nearer your price bracket at £199 at Fenwick. Otherwise, I recommend a visit to Zara or even Primark.
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Prada’s spring collection is full of delicious dresses that are exactly what you need but its prices are out of your range — so pay a visit to Marks & Spencer, where the Limited Collection is having a bit of a starry moment. It has a brilliant Prada-esque little black dress — Prada in its rather winsome mode, it has to be said, but very pretty all the same. It has a lowish round-necked collar and short sleeves, and for the office it could be worn with a tie-fronted cardigan or even a curvy jacket. It costs £65: an excellent buy. What’s more, you could dress it up very glamorously if you were going out to something after work.