Here’s a useful distinction that doesn’t always get made clearly enough: there’s the question of which colours suit your complexion — your skin tone, hair, and eyes — and there’s the entirely separate question of how colour placement on the body affects the way your figure reads…

Every summer, the same advice appears in every magazine: wear white, wear light colours, avoid black. It’s such familiar guidance that most of us have stopped questioning it. But is it true?..

There is a particular kind of disappointment that every sewist knows. You find a pattern you love. You buy beautiful fabric. You spend a weekend sewing…

t’s one of those words that sounds as if it has always existed — sundress — conjuring immediately the image of a light, sleeveless dress, a warm afternoon, the feeling of being exactly dressed for the season…

Let’s start with what this guide is not. It isn’t a list of things you’re forbidden to wear. It isn’t a set of rules about which silhouettes are “wrong” for certain figures…

There is something that happens when a woman puts on a party dress. It is not quite the same as putting on any other garment. The decision to dress up — to choose something beautiful, something made for an occasion rather than simply for covering — has always been an act of intention…

Of all the decisions that go into designing or choosing a dress, the neckline is the one most likely to change the entire character of a garment. The same dress, in the same fabric, sewn to the same measurements, can look entirely different with a V-neck instead of a square neck, or a round neck instead of a boat neck…

Let’s start with the thing nobody says clearly enough: sewing your first dress is not as difficult as it looks. The result — a wearable, beautiful garment made by your own hands — looks impressive to people who’ve never sewn…

There’s a moment every home sewer knows. You open your wardrobe on a hot morning, push past the shirts that need ironing and the trousers that feel too heavy, and reach for the one dress that fits perfectly, feels like nothing, and makes you look like you tried…