Forest Garden

As the weather gets chilly, I not with sadness the shortening daylight hours and the dwindling number of days I can wear dresses before losing my knees to frostbite. The flimsy, the mini and the sleeveless all begin to work their way to the back of the closet, after having finally gotten their due on Dressopotamia.

(Dressopotamia, by the way, is asynchronous; the pictures might be a day old, or a few months. I don't want to mislead you when I feature sundresses in late September, which I will.)

For these transition months, before I finally have to bite the bullet and wear (ugh) pants, I have a few tricks up my sleeve: leggings and cardigans are two, but you won't see them here.

The third, however, is the long-sleeved dress, of which Forest Garden is a beautiful example. And what sleeves they are!

Each shoulder has little ridges sewn into it, which is strikingly adorable to me. I've never seen anything else like it.

Other than that, Forest Garden's cut is so simple that in my fantasies where I make endless copies of the same dress in different prints, this is one I fantasize about reproducing.

I like to keep my daydreams modest.

Maybe my favorite thing about the print is that while all the pieces clearly belong together—aesthetically and thematically—the actual pattern is so wide-ranging that you might not even be seeing the whole thing on my body.

I bet the other dresses that were produced in the textile factory that day—Forest Garden's twins—all came out looking totally different.

They'd be the Clytemnestrae to Forest Garden's Helen, of course.

Besides long sleeves, what does it take for a dress to dominate the underrated equinox-adjacent periods?

A heavier material helps. If you are wearing leggings, you don't want everyone to be able to see the whole waistband where it stands out from (or presses into) your body.

Belts are also a good choice. Though it's hard to tell from these pictures, Forest Garden has a matching belt. Speaking in strictly scientific terms, it doesn't let the chillier air invade your uppers from your nethers.

The last tip—and this is crucial—bright, springtime-y colors. You could buy that applesauce about warm tones for fall, as if your clothes should match the foliage. But I prefer to rage against the dying of the light, with bright greens and radiant flowers in bloom!

Note: I do have lots of long-sleeved dresses in muted, even autumnal colors, but I'm counting on you having forgotten this mini-festo by the time I post them. Agreed?


All photos by Claire Loeb!