Womens dresses, with the hem length actually given

Midi, maxi and the length problem

Here is something worth knowing before you order anything online.

There is no authoritative definition of a midi dress. The dictionary gives midi as a dress, skirt or coat that usually extends to the mid-calf, and gives maxi simply as a long skirt, dress or coat, with no hemline position at all. The standard clothing terminology reference lists the lengths, micro-mini, mini, tea, ballerina, full length, midi, maxi, and supplies no definitions and no measurements whatsoever.

That is not an oversight. Midi is defined relative to your calf, so it is height-dependent by definition. The same dress is a midi at five foot nine and very nearly a maxi at five foot two.

Which is why a length in centimetres beats a name every time. Ask us for the shoulder-to-hem measurement of any dress here and we will give it to you, because the dresses are physically on the rails in Belfast.

As a rough guide on a 5'6" frame: 95 to 105cm shoulder-to-hem lands mid-calf, above 115cm reads as maxi, and below 90cm is a mini.

Silhouettes, and what the words mean

A-line has a fitted bodice and flares from the waist into a triangle, like a capital A. It is the most forgiving shape on most figures because it skims rather than follows.

Shift flows straight down from the shoulders, with only slight differences between the bust, waist, hip and hem measurements. No waist definition at all.

Sheath is form-fitting at every point from neckline to hem. It is the opposite of a shift, and the two get confused constantly because they look similar on a hanger and completely different on.

A wrap dress is defined in the dictionary as one made so that one side of the front crosses over the other and fastens at the side or ties at the back, which gives an adjustable waist. Tiered has no dictionary definition we could find. It describes a dress built in horizontal panels, each gathered onto the one above.

On the anxious question about tiers: the volume sits where the tiers start, so a dress tiered from the waist adds width at the hip, and one tiered from the bust adds it higher. That is the mechanism. Whether it suits you depends on where you want volume, not on the dress.

EU sizing, and where the published charts contradict each other

This is the useful part, and it is a genuine mess.

Three of the brands on this page are Danish, and one is Italian, and their own published conversion tables do not agree with each other.

Skall Studio, Danish, gives EU 36 as a UK 8 and as an Italian 40.

Ottod'Ame, which is Italian, gives Italian 40 as a UK 8. So Skall Studio and Ottod'Ame agree.

Baum und Pferdgarten, also Danish, gives EU 36 as a UK 8 but as an Italian 42. So the two Danish brands disagree with each other by a full Italian size. Ottod'Ame does not publish a chart we could retrieve, and its UK stockists are not consistent with each other either, some giving Italian 40 as a UK 8 and others as a UK 10 for skirts and trousers. Treat any Italian conversion here as approximate.

The Danish brands do not even agree on body measurements. At EU 32, Munthe gives a 60cm waist and Baum und Pferdgarten gives 62cm. At EU 44 they give 111cm and 112cm hips respectively. Small, but it means someone measuring 61cm at the waist is a Munthe 34 and a Baum und Pferdgarten 32.

They also disclose differently. Munthe publishes bust, waist and hip in centimetres and states plainly that these are body measurements rather than garment measurements. Baum und Pferdgarten publishes body measurements and tells you how to take them. Skall Studio publishes a letter-to-number converter with no body measurements at all.

Rixo runs UK 6 to 26 and publishes a petite range designed for women five foot three and under.

The short version: convert from your body measurements, not from a size label, and if the chart is ambiguous, ask us to measure the dress.

Viscose, silk and what they do in the wash

Viscose has the lowest elastic recovery of any fibre, and its durability and appearance retention are low, especially when wet. The recommended care for regular viscose is dry cleaning. High wet modulus viscose can be machine washed, and polynosic viscose is dimensionally stable, which by implication ordinary viscose is not.

We have not published a shrinkage percentage for viscose. No source of acceptable quality gives one, and the figures circulating are unsourced.

For silk, we could find no authority comparable to Woolmark. Everything published is a silk retailer's own blog. Some Rixo pieces are 100% silk and carry dry-clean-only labels. Treat the care label on the individual dress as the instruction and ignore the internet.

Which brands are actually here

Rixo for prints and occasion. Stine Goya, Danish, for colour. Farm Rio, Brazilian, for pattern. Skall Studio, Danish, for organic cotton and linen in a quieter register. Ottod'Ame, Italian, for a more classic cut. Vivere, which is a British label founded in 2023 by Savannah Miller, not an Italian one, despite the name.