I love me some dresses. I wear them all the time, even though dresses aren’t something I see a lot of people wearing on a regular basis over here. And I seriously don’t understand why. Dresses are feminine, comfy and easy to wear. They make a complete outfit in one easy step and can be worn year round. What’s not to like? To make life easier to find a dress in case you’re interest I am sharing my 5 favorite brands for dress shopping.
Dresses can be expensive, but most of my dresses are from very affordable places or I bought them on sale. I tend to pay no more than 50 euros for a dress, but only if it’s very special. Most of my dresses do not exceed the 30 euro mark. Add some cute shoes, a cardigan or blazer to warm things up and a thick pair of tights in winter time and you are good to go.
Forever 21
The first place I have to mention is Forever 21. A lot of Dutch people think F21 dresses are too short, but for someone who is only 5″ Forever 21 dresses always hit me at just the right spot. And that is why I consider myself to be lucky as Forever 21 dresses are super affordable at around 20 – 25 euros each. I also feel that Forever 21 does some fun dresses that you won’t find in other stores. The daisy print dress in the first picture with the light blue color and chiffon skirt is also from Forever 21.
H&M
I cannot write a blog post listing favorite fashion brands and not mention H&M. I think almost half of the clothes I wear are from the Swedish fashion house. I love H&M for 2 reasons: it accessible and it fits my body type. As much as I love other brands, they do not often fit me very well. But H&M just does. I can buy a skater skirt and know it will fit perfectly. Another H&M dress in this blog post is the cream lace dress you can see in the top most picture.
New Look
A brand that I love to shop at, but that doesn’t always fit me right is New Look. However, I do feel that they do fun items that are a little bit different from the usual. The thing with New Look for me is that it’s hard for me to find items that look good on me, but when they do, they are likely to be items that live in my closet for multiple seasons on one end. This floral & lace dress is an example of a dress I bought at New Look. At the bottom of this post you will find two other dresses I got at New Look: a purple daisy print dress and a black velvet dress.
Asos
On to the mother of any dress lover’s walhalla: Asos. Asos is of course a website that carries multiple brands but I love their name brand dresses most. The dress you see here is Asos, but I have bought many other dresses from there that I love so much. I save Asos for the more ‘special occasion’ dresses: a lace dress with peplum, a fun summer dress with palm tree print, a checkered print smock dress. If I were to take a look at my closet and pull out my most special dresses than all of them will have been purchased on Asos.
Miscellaneous (New Yorker, Primark, Mango, River Island)
Of course there are many other brands that sell some great dresses. New Yorker, Primark, Mango and River Island are brands from which I own multiple dresses as well with I think Primark and River Island now dominating my closet. River Island I tend to buy from Asos as that is easy to get to for me. The tapestry print dress above is from there. I haven’t been in love with Primark clothing for a while though, but the black lace dress you see at the left here is still one of my favorites.
Where do you buy your dresses?