Wrapped in Plaid

I think I found my new go-to summer work dress. You know, for when it's 86 degrees and completely muggy, and the thought of wearing pants makes you want to crawl inside your fridge and hide from the world.

It's casual, yes, but I think it's just dressy enough to pass at the office (especially on Fridays). Since Target has the worst models in the world, it looks really unflattering and bulky, but I swear the Converse One Star Ruffle Sleeve Dress, $27.99, is actually very flattering towards your curves. I felt a little Sofia Vergara (Gloria from Modern Family and, for my money, the hottest woman on TV right now) in this dress--wrap dresses are famous for creating the perfect hourglass figure. And what I love about this dress is that the wrap portion isn't too meager; the two sides overlap enough so that if a breeze comes and blows up the top portion, the bottom portion will still keep you covered. I tend to favor the faux-wrap dress for this reason (and I always wear a slip, just to be prepared for when I walk over subway grates), but this dress has the benefit of being totally adjustable. I also dig the tiered ruffles at the bottom, which keep this from being just another plaid dress.

While at Target I also tried this dress from the Zac Posen collaboration. FYI, the Atlantic Terminal Target in Brooklyn had a surprisingly good selection of Zac Posen stuff, and a lot of sizes, but it was a bit weird because they didn't have the words Zac Posen on any of the displays. I'm going to make a wild guess and say that they sold out, took down the promotional stuff, and then unexpectedly got another shipment. Not that it benefited me, because the dress I was hoping to score didn't fit right in either a medium or large.
The Snap Tape Dress, $69.99, just wasn't flattering to my boobs in either size, and with that neckline, you have to make sure your decolletage looks its best.
If it were cheaper I might have done that really, really stupid girl thing of buying something that doesn't fit but telling yourself, "I can totally lose enough weight to zip this up in a few weeks!" But I don't plan going up or down a cup size, so, alas, I had to leave without it. I just wish there was some stretch to the fabric--instead, it's a very unstretchy polyester that reminds me a bit of a raincoat, but it works for the design. Sigh. I love the "sailor by day, dominatrix by night" associations of this dress. Maybe in a few months I'll add it to my regular Ebay search rotation, along with a Proenza Schouler for Target dress (the aqua and white palm tree one) and a Vena Cava for Gap dress (the zip-up tank dress; for some reason, the other dress they did pops up on Ebay every day, but the zip dress is much more elusive).