My summer dress mission success!

Have you had much of a chance to wear a summer dress this season? I know from reading other blogs that the British summer hasn’t been so good this year. Laurie, from Vanity and Me even said she’s thinking about changing her wardrobe to get her winter clothes out again! For me, that’s hard to get my head around, considering it’s still super scorchio here in Portugal!

Last week, I think I was hotter than I’ve ever been before. Let me explain… it was already super hot, some days reaching temperatures close to 40ºC. On the Monday, I headed over to Carvoeiro (the town where I grew up) to have lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen for a couple of years. Afterwards, I hopped into my car to drive home. The temperature registered 38.5ºC as I drove. But that wasn’t the main problem.

You see my car’s air conditioning isn’t working at the moment. And on top of that, it’s making a loud ticking sound, and the only way to stop the ticking sound is to turn the heating on!! I tried driving with the windows open but the heat from outside was scorching hot. So I tried closing all the windows and just having the air flowing inside the car. Nothing worked of course. And my body temperature felt like it was going through the roof! Add to that, my hormones lol. Anyway, it was the most unpleasant drive that I’ve ever done (apart from that time when I was driving home from shooting a movie scene at 6 o clock in the morning and I needed a pee so badly it hurt lol).

When I got home, I literally stripped off and fell into the pool. Boy did I need that! I stayed in there for about an hour and a half, just floating and reading a book (The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse). Talk about utter bliss.

Anyway, that wasn’t meant to be the main subject of this post. This was supposed to be about my new summer dress. Well, actually I should say dresses, because I bought three! I’d been wanting the perfect summer dress for some time, but just hadn’t gotten around to shopping for one until Friday. I was on a summer dress mission!

Several hours later though, I’d been into almost every clothes shop in the Aqua shopping centre and I hadn’t come up trumps! I couldn’t find a single dress that I liked. I wanted something with no sleeves, just simple straps, nice floaty fabric and ideally, something long. But I was too late, the shops are now filling up with the Autumn / Winter collections (which is horrible considering it’s so bloomin’ hot!).

There was one last shop I figured I might find something, so I headed over to the Portimao Retail Centre, into C&A (you can now buy online which is great for those of you that don’t have C&A wherever you are). Although it seemed a little emptier than usual (thanks Covid), I found almost what I’d been looking for. A cute little summer dress, in a nice floaty fabric (viscose) with a pretty print. The only thing it wasn’t, was full length. But when I tried it on, I loved it! And the best thing about it? The price. It was only 12.99! Bargain! Anyway, the dress is available in three different prints / colours so I bought all three! I’m delighted with them, and know that they’re all going to get worn to death over the next few years!

I’m wearing the lightest colour one here, with my white leather Ecco trainers, my old Primark denim jacket and my Kipling bumbag. It’s a look that never dates—the summer dress, trainers and denim jacket combo and I just love it. What about you? Do you ever style your summer dress this way?