Left Ralph Lauren’s take on girly florals was paired with socks and loafers on the designer’s New York runway. Right: We wrapped a belt around our roomy version, which was $9.99 at a shop filled with knick-knacks in Toronto’s Little Italy.
Even if you have dedicated your life to the Angelina Jolie trifecta of black, white and grey or the name Laura Ashley makes your gorge rise, there will come a day this season when you will need a sweet little pink floral dress.
The occasion might be a picnic with extended family or a neighbourhood tea or maybe a date to the zoo, but will be a time and a place for twee.
Remember also that the farm-girl floral dress is at the heart of the grunge look when paired with army boots and ratty hair. And it would not take a style PhD to conclude, after a discontented winter of stores overrun with flannel plaid shirting, that the early-nineties Seattle thing is coming around again to dishevel all and sundry in the path of its feedback.
Seen at left, the American original from the New York runway is by Ralph Lauren and would cost you about $500. But we followed some sweet nostalgic memories in seeking out our sweet knockoff.
Long before Courtney Love molled (or mauled or maybe even malled!) her way into our collective consciousness, a design duo spiritually raised on Toronto's Queen Street West, Joyce Gunhouse and Judy Cornish, developed a signature look - the sloppily chic, artfully baggy housedress.
It was the cool downtown-girl uniform of my youth. And although their perfect dresses continue to be flawlessly constructed to look so offhand, I always had a fantasy that the women wearing them had plucked them off the racks of the grotty Italian housedress shops on College Street to the north.
These shops, including a favourite holdout across from Café Diplomatico in Little Italy, remain today; you can get embellished Chinese slippers for two bucks as well as this Italian/Portuguese-mama number for $9.99.
Cinched with a little belt, the effect is bang on the original.