Ignore the Fashion Naysayers: You Can Still Wear a Floral Dress for Spring | Dresses

Daylight, the mythical creature seen most often through office windows in the 27 months since Christmas, now extends into the evenings. On the street, the sweet chime of the ice cream truck harmonizes with the lazy hum of Lime bikes. This can only mean one thing. The time has come. You open your wardrobe and opt for a floral dress. It's a rite of spring.

Except that every year, this precious moment is tarnished, just a little, by the voice in your head that insists on sarcastically quoting The Devil Wears Prada. You know the line. Flowers ? For spring? Revolutionary, says fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, wilting a million little prints on the vine without even raising her voice.

But you know what? I want to wear a floral print dress in spring. So sue me. It's not about reinventing the wheel, I understand, but it's not meant to be. Spring flowers aren't about fashion, which is why fashion people sniff them. Spring flowers are a ritual, a marker of the passing of time, a celebration of the end of another winter. Like taking the umbrella out of your bag and replacing it with a pair of sunglasses, it's as much a statement of hope as it is of expectation.

Because spring never arrives fully formed on the first day of spring, nor on the day the clocks advance, nor on the spring holiday, nor on Easter. We have a few days of good weather and we all say, Wow, it's spring, isn't it beautiful?, and then suddenly it's back to the middle of winter. And this continues throughout the month of April. So at some point you have to stop obsessing about long-term forecasts and make a decision. Vote for spring. That’s really what the floral dress is. Like a flag or a football jersey, it's about believing in the dream of the season to come.

So Miranda might consider us basic, but we express our connection to the natural world through a midi dress, which is quite different, thank you very much. The best floral dresses are those that aren't bland. Nobodys Child is a good place to look, starting with their Nova Pastel Floral Smocked Midi Dress (89). A dark background, look Kitris Bridget black ruched maxi dress in grape leaf print (190) adds instant sophistication. Large-scale blooms add instant boldness, but a small, precise bud can look chic. I like Albarays Sprig floral summer dress (99) with a custom print based on meadow flowers, each bud suspended against a pristine white background as if caught in a flower press.

But the best thing, of course, is to look in your own wardrobe. Additionally, the first blooms of spring are tempered, for practicality's sake, with the layers of safety net needed on days when a flimsy dress won't help you get by. An optimistic outlook is laudable, but leaving the house in a dress and sandals at this point in the year is pure folly. Your spring look therefore only partly depends on the floral dress itself and partly on what you wear with it. The extra layer should be something that adds chic, not something that kills the look. So it's worth putting a little thought into the outfit as a whole instead of just throwing on a dress and then, when you're cold, randomly grabbing a cardigan.

Did you buy a sleeveless knit this winter? A tank top, or a sleeveless round neck, or a buttoned knit cardigan? This is a new wardrobe item for me, and for many of us, I think. It was great in the winter: I wore mine over shirts, because you feel like you're wearing a sweater (warm and cozy) but you present yourself to the world as wearing a shirt (crisp and vibrant). When the weather changes, a sleeveless knit is a great partner for your floral dresses. Not only does this transform a vacation dress into a spring outfit, but it also gives this outfit a fashion point of view, because sleeveless knitting is really a thing and therefore marks the wearer as someone who knows this genre things. . If your sleeveless knit is neutral in tone, it's also a useful way to tone down the visual impact of a print that seems a little too loud or hectic for the office.

You can also wear a blazer as a cardigan, softening the silhouette by cinching it with a thin, soft belt. Tights probably won't work, but if you're not ready for bare legs, I spotted Anna Wintour wearing a pansy-print Stella McCartney silk dress over snake-print knee-high boots at Paris fashion week , and she looked very chic. Take that, Miranda.

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Stylist assistant: Sam Deaman. Model: Liz De Aza at Milk (right) and Selina at Mrs Robinson (left). Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Hair by Sam McKnight and Charlotte Tilbury. Selina is wearing: Essentiel Antwerp floral set, YSSO earrings. Liz is wearing: a dress from & Other Stories, a necklace from Crystal Haze