I spent years thinking blue linen was strictly a holiday colour, something you packed for Puglia and never touched again until the following June. That was a properly wrong opinion to hold for so long, because brunch happens most weekends of the year, not just the ones with a flight attached, and a good blue linen dress does exactly the same gentle, unbothered job on a Saturday in a car park in March as it does abroad.
What makes one actually work is the weight of the linen and how honestly it wears its creases. A dress that goes stiff and boardlike isn’t doing its job, and one that’s so flimsy it clings after one glass of something fizzy isn’t either. You want it heavy enough to move properly when you walk, with a crease or two by the second hour that reads as lived in rather than slept in. My colleague Priya caught me wearing what she correctly identified as “the same dress as Saturday” on a Tuesday, and I let it stand, because that’s the actual test.
If you’re happy repeating it within the same week, it’s earned its place.
Styling wise, resist the urge to dress it up too formally. A pair of flat leather sandals and something gold and thin at the neck does more than heels ever will, brunch is not the place for anything you have to sit carefully in. A denim jacket over the top works for the walk there if the morning’s doing that thing where it can’t decide on a season, and a canvas tote rather than anything structured keeps the whole thing looking like you’re going somewhere pleasant rather than somewhere with a dress code.
Sunglasses pushed up into your hair, not worn, unless you’re actually outdoors squinting, in which case fair enough.
It suits the whole loose category of daytime occasions that don’t want to be taken too seriously, a birthday brunch, a garden pub lunch, a wander round a market that turns into lunch because it always does. Nothing about it should feel like an event dress. That’s the whole appeal, and precisely why I now own four of them.
Top Picks
