A fairly long time ago I stumbled upon a great blog called Sole Sisters. Two girls who met through work and discovered they shared a great passion for travel. One of their early features were blog posts about useful items for travellers. The one recommending the Le Sac dress from American Apparel really caught my eye, so much so that I put acquiring it onto my list. I finally got around to ordering the dress (from the Korean website, with the help of google translate) two weeks ago. It was delivered last week and when I got home from school I couldn't wait to start experimenting with it. Here is the premise for this garment: It's one dress, but you can adapt it into numerous styles. Different websites claim from 6 - 16 different styles. I really only found 7 ways I would wear it, a couple of the ones suggested by AA are extremely similar so it could be stretched to a tentative 8... Here are my attempts...
The Deepest V |
This is the 'deepest V' style from the website. Basically a boob tube style. Crossing over the long straps at the back to clinch the dress in under the bust. There is a separate style listed as 'strapless' but that is without using the straps to clinch it in, and looks a little unflattering (although they have it styled with a belt so much the same as this one...)
The Grecian |
One shoulder (or 'Grecian') I think I like this one best. The hem is wonky because of the one shoulder design but it doesn't look too bad and this style is quite flattering. I also like how you can change which shoulder the strap is on.
The Classic Le Sac |
This is called the 'Classic Le Sac'. I've used a belt (as they did on their website) to give it a better look. The only problem is the length of the strap. In order to adapt the many styles the straps are really long, but this style only requires being tied on one shoulder. So as you can see from the picture the excess strap is very long.
The Gathered Mini |
This style is almost identical to the above style, but this is called the 'Gathered Mini'. This one uses the whole strap to tie around the body. It's still a nice style, but this time there is a bit of an awkward ugly bit at the back.
The back of the Gathered Mini |
To get the strap from the shoulders to the body you have to twist them around each other and it's clearly visible at the back. Not the end of the world but a little bit awkward.
The Halterneck |
This is the halterneck style. On the tutorial videos the girl uses a small braided strap, but as I didn't have one I used the normal strap (and again I used my belt to pull it in.) This worked ok, but as the strap is long the back looks like this:
The back of the Halterneck |
The marilyn |
This one is called the Marilyn. It's a nice change of style, and at the top it looks ok, but it really doesn't do anything for my big bum. Because there is a seam running down the front in this style the material bunches together and although it looks ok in the picture I wasn't too keen on it in reality. Definitely not the most flattering, but still a nice alternative.
The simple line |
This one is the 'Simple line'. It's a good way to have an unusual strap. The material gathers in a weird way at the back and you have to be careful with the opening at the front, I might take a safety pin around with me so I can ensure I'm not flashing my bra with some of these styles! Overall this is a fairly good one. The strap definitely looks like nice detail here rather than awkward as on some of the other styles.
The back of 'The simple line' |
There is another style called the 'Dominatrix'. Which twists the straps around the décolletage. But I nearly strangled myself trying to pull it off and decided that was better left to the experts! I've also see some people wearing this as a skirt, which is quite a nice option, and you can also pull the straps right out and wear it with a long top underneath (gotta be careful of strong winds blowing the top of it open and flashing underwear though!) I'm pretty chuffed with this purchase overall, a good way to have lots of options out of one thing when travelling, and I might try and get some different coloured straps to add some more zing!