One of the easiest things for a woman to wear is a wrap dress. The great thing about them is that they’re so well-loved and respected that they’ve never gone out of style, so it’s typically possible to find them on the high street and at your nearest mall as well as online. For me, they weren’t something I appreciated until I began to dress in vintage styles. Ironically, though, one of the things I love most about them is that unlike many of the swing dresses hanging in my wardrobe, I don’t feel like I have to style them up in a vintage fashion to wear them.

On days when I don’t have the motivation to get pinned up, when I need to get out of the house quickly, or when it wouldn’t be fully appropriate where I’m going to turn up in a 50s swing dress and floofy petticoat a-swingin’, a wrap dress is easy to throw on, comfortable to wear, and always makes me feel put together even when the effort sunk into that ‘putting together’ was minimal. They’re chic, they’re timeless, and thanks to this Lotta wrap dress from Joanie Clothing, they’re also totally sassy.

Dress: Lotta Leopard wrap dress C/O Joanie Clothing
Beret: eBay
Bag: Lola Von Rose
Boots: Burgundy Cecily by JustFab (Referral link for bargain price)

Made from a stretch jersey fabric, this dress is not only ridiculously comfortable to wear (no, seriously, it’s kind of ridiculous) but it’s also incredibly soft to the touch, so much so that each time I pick it up I can’t help but give the fabric a little bit of a stroke to appreciate that softness. (What? That’s not weird. It’s really soft, no joke. No, I’m not weird, you’re weird!)

Ahem. Anyway…

The thing that is unusual for me about this dress is that it’s got one of those skirts that doesn’t fully meet to cover your knees in the front, creating a bit of a hi-low effect. Typically those kinds of cuts put me off a style, as I’m not a hi-low fan (hello 80s!) but this leopard print was so good and the design of the dress overall so lovely that I actually came to really like the slight knee-glimpse the skirt provides. The soft fabric skims your body without clinging to any bumps obviously, and the half sleeves provide both some warmth and upper arm coverage for those who find that comforting. It’s a true wrap dress, so the belt of the left side threads through a small hole in the waistband on the right hand side, wrapping around the body to tie in the front–or the back, if you prefer. Because it’s a true wrap dress, that does also mean the sizing can be adjusted somewhat to best fit you.

It’s hard to measure a wrap dress to give you specifics about sizing, especially one so stretchy, but the waist flat measured across the waistband of the back of the dress is 20 inches, with then plenty of stretch from the fabric and adjustability of the wrap function to adjust to your waist size. In the waist I could have managed to size down into a 16, but because of my 52 inch hips this dress definitely lays more nicely around my hips in the 18 than it would have had I sized down. My 46 inch bust is fully covered, even modestly so, a pleasant change from the fact that wrap dresses often offer ample cleavage by virtue of their cross-front design. Basically, this dress is a marvel even by usual wrap dress standards, and I have a feeling it’ll be jumping to the top of my ‘easy wear’ clothes pile pronto.

The Lotta leopard print wrap dress comes in UK sizes 8-22 from Joanie Clothing, who ship worldwide.