Dropped-Waist/Blouson Dresses: A Curvy Girl's Survival Guide

I am on a quest to find perfectly comfortable casual dresses to wear.  I have a very dynamic life as a stay-at-home engineer.  My outfits need to go from cleaning the sink to writing software to shopping for groceries to doing laundry to wrangling kindergartners at my church.  I want to be stylish and comfortable.

I impulse-purchased a knit racerback dress for $20 at Target in the spring. (Yes, I know, that's like fashion mistake #1.)  It was A-line and kind of hung like a bag on me.  I belted it and ignored the odd silhouette, mostly because I wanted to get "my-money's worth" out of it before attempting alterations.

My first try was to add a strip of elastic to gather the waist, like other casual dresses I had seen at the store.  This converted the dress to a blouson style.   Which leads me to make the following Public Advisory Notice:

Warning: Some blouson dress or dropped-waist dress styles only flatter stick figures.

 

For those of you out there that already knew that, feel free to say, "I told you so."  I will admit I was taken in by an ill-conceived fad this time.

So I guess I'll be removing my original alterations and trying something else. (Good thing they weren't permanent.)  I plan on detailing my sewing quest in an upcoming post. In an attempt to determine my next steps, I've created the following helpful style guide for curvier women (such as myself).

Blouson Dresses

Extra care must be taken to define a waist in the presence of a lusher torso. 

No, no, no

The following dresses fail at this concept.

These dresses have elastic bands to draw in the waist.  But because there's so much bulk both above and below that waist, it's worse than no waist at all.  All that's left is a crease that draws your eye right to it and the added bulk there from the cinched fabric.  Just say no!

Much Better

These styles define the waist by slimming down the skirt.  The sense of unbalance between the top and the bottom makes the waist look smaller.

Potentially Even Better

These dresses feature a dropped waist instead of a blouson style.  The two styles sound similar to the untrained fashionista and might be used interchangeably.  The key to choosing the right dropped waist is similar to choosing the right blouson: intentional unbalance.  Here, the top is slimmer than the bottom, whittling the torso and elongating it without sacrificing the frill of the full skirt.

Well, there you have it. Hope this helps someone!