My opinion on burgundy A line dresses has done a full loop. Two years ago I called them “the wine colored uniform of every wedding I got invited to that fall” and meant it as an insult. Now I own three and one of them has been worn enough times that the hem has started to soften in a way I actually like, the way a good pair of jeans breaks in at the knee. That’s the whole arc. Nobody sat me down and changed my mind, it just wore me down one decent compliment at a time.
Here’s the thing about this shape specifically, it does the work a fitted dress can’t do on a bad week.
I wore mine to my brother Sam’s engagement dinner and got four compliments, which sounds like a lot until you realize one of them was from Sam’s fiancée’s mother, who does not hand those out for free, she told me the color made my “whole face look less tired,” which is either the nicest or meanest thing anyone’s said to me this year and I’ve chosen to take it as the former.
The color itself does more heavy lifting than I expected. It reads as dressed up without trying, which means it survives being paired down to almost nothing, I’ve worn one with white sneakers and a denim jacket to a Tuesday lunch and worn the exact same dress with black boots and my mom’s old gold hoops to something that actually mattered, and both times it looked like a decision, not an accident.
The gamble one, and I’ll say it plainly, is the wrap style version. On the right person it’s the best thing in the category, on me it gaped at the chest by hour three of a work event and I spent the back half of the night doing a subtle one handed hostage situation with the fabric. I still think it’s a good dress.
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I don’t think it’s a good dress for everybody, and I’m tired of pieces that pretend otherwise.
Shoe pairing matters more than I expected going in. Anything too matchy, a burgundy shoe with a burgundy dress, reads like a costume, I learned that one the hard way at a holiday party and have the photos to prove it. Black boots work almost every time. Gold jewelry works better than silver, I don’t have a construction reason for that, it’s just true.
What earns the permanent rotation spot isn’t the fanciest one, it’s the one I can put on without thinking and trust completely, the one that’s been washed a dozen times and still holds its shape at the waist where cheaper ones start to sag first. That’s the real test. Everything else is just noise around it.
