Fashion Focus: Next Dress

One of the things that I didn’t really realize when moving to another country was that you have to rebuild your entire mental database of stores. Back in the Netherlands, I knew exactly which places would cater to my style, size, price range etc, and which places I should just avoid. Then I moved here to the UK… There were some stores that were the same, but mostly they’re just completely different. So in the past few years, I’ve been slowly figuring out which places I should shop at.

One of the places I still hadn’t ever really tried was Next. It’s just one of those stores that never grabbed my eye when walking past it. So when I got the chance to review a dress from the Next online store, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try it out. I found a cool looking dress, ordered it in size 10 and within 2 days it arrived. Tried it on… and it didn’t fit. Damn. I’m not a size 10 with them, I guess.

I was about to leave for Christmas a couple days later, so decided it would be easier to actually go to a store and exchange it there. Sadly they didn’t have the dress I ordered in a smaller size, so I needed to find another dress. And that’s when I realized why I had never shopped at Next before: I tried on about 20 dresses until I finally found one that fit. Almost every single dress didn’t fit my hips properly or was too long on me, just not suiting my body type at all.

I eventually did find something that fitted me though: a nice slightly business-y looking dress. What do you think?

I have to say though that a lot of the dresses I tried on I wish had fit on me. I know I have short legs (compared to my upper body), so I’m guessing if you’ve got long legs, the dresses would suit you fine. The interesting thing though is I’ve read other bloggers complain about other stores like New Look and Dorothy Perkins that their dresses are way too short, but I’ve never had a problem with them. I’m guessing it really depends on your body type, which stores will suit you best.

So anybody else “discovered” this? Which stores work best for you?