Your Easy, Breezy Guide to the Best Summer Dress
After seasons spent in slippers, now’s the time to revive your wardrobe with inspirational fashion for the warmer months ahead. And what could be more effortless than a dress?
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Your Easy, Breezy Guide to the Best Summer Dresses
After seasons spent in slippers, now’s the time to revive your wardrobe with inspirational fashion for the warmer months ahead. And what could be more effortless than a dress?
Shop DressesBy: Team Liberty
An entire outfit-in-one, the best summer dresses take the stress out of rushed mornings and can instantly revive your sense of style when you find yourself stuck in a summer outfit rut. Throw one on with a light layer and the perfect summer bag and you're good to go. But which dresses that’ll have you actually feeling excited to get dressed this season? From vintage florals to 90s-inspired fits, discover our download of the five most compelling dress trends to shop now.
1.
Farm Rio Lilac Beaks and Bananas Maxi-Dress
Long, hot summer
As far-flung getaways become all the more tangible, now's the time to revitalise your high-summer wardrobe with bold colours and decedent patterns to jet set in ultimate style. Begin your journey via the maximalist eye of Milanese-label La Double J, with its eye-popping archival print and mid-century silhouettes. If a city trip is on the cards, Isabel Marant Etoile, is the epitome of effortless Parisian bohemé with free-flowing dresses.
The 90s Called
Nostalgia is transporting us back to the 90s, a decade synonymous with low-key dressing and plenty of attitude. Stine Goya's pick-n-mix prints and dropped waistlines embody the playful, free spirit of the trend, while Copenhagen-cult-classic Ganni is our go-to for styles that evoke effortless pre-millennium chic. For daytime, seersucker checks and ditsy florals will be your hardest workers, but when night creeps in, slip into all-over leopard, throwback prints and slinkier silhouettes: Paloma Wool, in particular, has this trend nailed.
2.
House of Sunny Lakeside Hockney Halter-Neck Dress
3.
Gant maxi dress
Work-to-Weekend
For many of us, the work-life balance has become more fluid, and as such, our wardrobes should follow suit. Dresses with a day-to-evening appeal are key to the season, and we have a multitude of options to fit the bill. Invest in the forever appeal of a timelessly tailored shirt dress, or something altogether a little floatier, like this maxi dress by Gant, using Liberty Fabrics, no less; it's just as perfect for the beach as it is for the boardroom. Otherwise, Italy's Max Mara is a linchpin of round-the-clock styling, and the ultimate in upscale prêt-à-porter flair.
Full volume
Make an entrance with a dress that takes up as much space as physically possible. Full volume is back, and Dries Van Noten's dresses are bigger than ever, balancing joyful, ballooning silhouettes in the designer's trademark euphoric prints and embellishments. Elsewhere, Bernadette marries bold prints and voluminous forms; these are dresses destined for dancefloors. If you like your oversized a little more everyday, try an A-line trapeze, as spotted throughout collections by Ganni, Max Mara and Rixo.
4.
Bernadette Maddi Dress
5.
Rixo Agyness Dress
Vintage revival
This season, designers revisit dress silhouettes from bygone eras through a contemporary gaze, delivering pieces that feel every bit of the moment as they do a future keepsake. The Vampires Wife is the embodiment of this idea, translating silhouettes that span Victoriana and 70's prairie with iconic Liberty prints and decedent puff-sleeve detailing. Elsewhere, Rixo's covetable tea dresses offer vintage charm, featuring all-over florals, intricate lace insets and quaint embroideries. Finally, Erdem offers a quintessentially British take on historic dress codes with classic interior florals on flamboyant silhouettes.