What do bikes, turtles and ropes have in common?

Last summer I was all about the bike t-shirt; a year later, I'm in love with the bike dress.

From Anthropologie, naturally, the Two-Wheeler Shirtdress,$128, is parked happily at the intersection of whimsical and appropriate. You have a very modest, business-like shirtdress silhouette, and from afar you might this is a simple navy fabric with a white circular print. But get closer and...
Penny-farthings as well as classic bicycles! Penny-farthings, if you're not up on your antiquated methods of transportation, are the bikes with the giant front wheel that the rider perches atop, with a smaller wheel behind. The Penny-farthing has been on my mind Cafe Deville, on the corner of 13th and 3rd Ave, was just replaced by a restaurant called The Penny Farthing. My first year in New York (almost five years ago!), I used to walk by Cafe Deville on my way to the gym and was also impressed by the young, attractive, interesting-looking people drinking wine at the sidewalk tables. I thought, "When I'm an attractive and interesting New Yorker, I'll drink wine at a sidewalk table at Cafe Deville." But I never ate there--if The Penny Farthing has sidewalk tables, though, maybe I can fulfill the spirit of my dream if not the letter.

Anyway, the dress--it's exactly the sort of thing Anthro does exquisitely. It reminded me of another dress that Anthro is sadly now sold out of, the Turtle-Print dress.
If you had asked me a month ago if I would ever wear a dress with turtles on it, I would say, "What do you think I am, some kind of manic pixie dream girl?" And, let's be honest, this does look like something Zooey Deschanel might wear while singing old-timey karaoke to a boy whose heart she will eventually break. But hey, it's summer: maybe I want to break some hearts while singing old torch songs at a karaoke bar (no, I definitely don't want to do the latter--I want to sing "Oops I Did It Again" in Koreatown). The dress is designed by Moulinette Soeurs, and while it may no longer be on the Anthropologie website, I will definitely be keeping an eye on Ebay to see if it pops up.

So there's a dress that I can't buy because it's too expensive and a dress that I can't buy because it's sold out. Anthropologie is all, "Ok, you've done a good job resisting thus far, but what about this?"

Also by Moulinette Soeurs (a name I'll clearly need to keep an eye out for in the future), the Know the Ropes dress is on sale for $69.95. Really, the reason I want it is because it looks like Burberry plaid--so much classier than regular hipster or lumberjack plaid. But the asymmetrical neckline is hot, especially for showing some unexpected skin in the summer. The nautical name alone is enough for me to get out my credit card, but then I realized what the "ropes" were referring to...

The "plaid" is actually coiled ropes! Man, if I ever get invited to a party on a yacht, I'm going to be prepared.