The essential dress is always a summer dress. Obviously there are cocktail dresses and evening dresses (those ridiculous, frequently monstrous creations worn by actresses at the Oscars), but none has the allure of the summer dress, which contains all the promise of summer itself. My personal favourite is a red silk shift dress with gold patterned panels at the sides which I bought for my wife in Vientiane, Laos, about 10 years ago; a decade later it's still going strong, its promise unbroken.
I am aware of the dangers of converting personal preferences into rules but, in the spirit of Wallace Stevens' poem "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" ("It must be ..."), here are my thoughts on the perfect (summer) dress:
First, it must be sleeveless. Obviously. I announced this, years ago, to my wife. "But I have a dress with sleeves," she said.
"Which one is that?"
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