Today’s guest post is brought to you by British blogging duo Papow & Flo. You can find them both on said mentioned fabulous blog, where they cover everything about their vintage style, including how to make it work for different body types and skin tones, and on their Papow & Flo Facebook page. Today they’re showing you how easy it is to take one dress and style it multiple ways to be either casual or dressier for any occasion. Over to you, girls!

Hello readers! We are Cacao Papow and Florence Flounce (Papow and Flo) – this week’s guest bloggers for Miss Amy May. If you’d like to find out more about us, you can follow our blog or find us on Facebook.

Being birds of a feather, we have quite similar tastes. This can end up with both of us owning the same outfit…tricky – if both of us fancy whipping out a similar look. With popular vintage reproduction brands, this problem can crop up quite often (especially at big events). To help remedy this issue, we took the same dress and styled it in different ways. Hopefully, this can give inspiration for individualising a certain piece of clothing or more options for what to do with pieces in your wardrobe.

Nautical is a classic pin-up style and a look that both of us adore. It’s why we own the Anchors Aweigh Halterneck Pencil Dress from Vivien of Holloway. We’re going to show you two casual looks and two dressier looks.

Cacao Papow
VoH dress size: 18/16

In this first look, I focused purely on accessories. Personally, I associate heels with a more glamorous look so I paired the dress with these white flats from Primark. Denim is a simple but effective way of dressing down an outfit; I’ve worn this jacket from Marks and Spencer with so many vintage dresses – a definite wardrobe staple. The cropped style helps to keep you covered, while also showing off your dress (and your waist). You can easily switch up the colours of your accessories to change the look of this outfit.

For the second look, I wanted to drastically change the look of the pencil dress. Taking inspiration from Miss Victory Violet, I converted the dress into a skirt. This gives you so many more options for changing your outfit. Red Converse keep this look both retro and casual at the same time. The top comes from Primark – a great vintage-inspired piece to have to hand. The red belt ties the dress together with the shoes and helps to highlight your waist. The chiffon scarf just adds another splash of colour. For another variation, you could pull the top back up and wear a different skirt over the top.

Florence Flounce
VoH dress Size: 10

For my first “dressier look” I decided to focus on white accessories as I believe these really bring out the anchor print. I teamed the dress with a VoH two inch white elastic waist belt and New Look mid-heel court shoes. As this is more of an evening look, heels were an obvious choice here right? I also accessorised the outfit with pearls and more pearls; necklace, earrings, bracelet, and ring. Pearls are my ultimate downfall I admit! Finally, I chose a blue and white hair flower to bring out both colours from the print of the dress. This outfit would be perfect for a wedding, and as shown could be worn alone during the day or with the matching VoH anchors aweigh bolero, possibly into a chillier summer evening.

For the second look I decided to mix things up a bit and bring in my favourite colour; RED! This look is definitely a dressier option than those worn by Cacao Papow, however the accessory choices I have made demonstrate how this look can still be achieved on a tighter budget. I teamed the dress with a red VoH two inch waist belt, New Look patent court shoes, Primark plastic bangle, Primark stud earings and Avon anchor necklace. To complete the look, I popped on the red Lorena hat by Collectif. This hat is a god send and has a fine elastic strap that you can use to fasten and pin the hat underneath your hair (nobody likes a wonky hat). You could once again wear the dress with or without a cover-up.

There are lots of options out there – so experiment and have fun with it! What would you do with this dress?