Sloan Mustard Swing Dress - Chic Style Boutique

One of the hardest things about blogging has to be finding new and interesting locations to shoot. I live in Norfolk, which in itself is an area known for its beautiful natural landscape, but I tend to try to keep my shoots local, which includes Gorleston and Great Yarmouth! Having exhausted most of the local hot spots, we took a trip down to the site of the old town wall, which ended up being a beautiful backdrop for the Sloan Dress from Chic Style Boutique by Lindy Bop.

Great Yarmouth town has one of the best preserved and most complete Medieval town walls in England, dating from 28 September 1261 when King Henry III granted Yarmouth the right to enclose the town with a wall and a ditch to protect them from pirates and ensure taxes could be collected. As a Scheduled Ancient Monument, large sections of these walls and eleven towers still survive today.

Photo from http://www.great-yarmouth.co.uk/things-to-do/medieval-town-wall.aspx

As I have mentioned so many times before, the colour pallet that I am used to is fairly muted. I stick to black, red, navy, dark green and other such colours. Brights like pink, baby blue, yellow etc do not suit my dark hair and ghostly complexion. So I was not sure how I would get on with Mustard? Turns out, it is probably my new favourite colour!

Colour wise, this dress is a dream. The mix of mustard and black is just beautiful and really makes this dress a multi seasonal item, something which I am a massive fan of. However, I have to say that fit wise, I am really disappointed. 

I bought this dress in a Size 8, which on the Size chart measures 31.9in in the bust. I am a 35 inch bust and had no issues, so I would suggest that there is a decent amount of give here. The waist comes in at 26.8 and I am a 26.5inch waist. I had no issues here, so the waist measurement seems spot on to me. The issue I had however, was with the fit around the front of the dress. 

As you can see from the above image, the area around my bra strap gapes massively. The fit here is so poor that it renders the dress pretty much unwearable, as you can constantly see my bra straps. I attempted to wear the dress without a bra, but it made the whole top area of the dress far too exposed and looked pretty daft. The lack of fit on this part of the dress meant that the sleeves just kept falling down. It fits perfectly everywhere else, so this issue around the top is very strange indeed. 

On the image from the Lindy Bop model, you can clearly see her armpit on the left hand side, which I am not entirely sure is normal for a dress with sleeves? It doesn't state on the listing that it can be worn 'off the shoulder' (as this would provide a bit more rationale as to the fit?) so I honestly don't know that is going on here? This model is almost wearing it off the shoulder, which is really strange and when you look closely, you can see that it doesn't fit her. 

Needless to say, this is a beautiful dress, let down by a poor fit, which is sadly a trend I am seeing more and more of with Lindy Bop. Of my recent items from Lindy Bop, only 80% of it fit correctly. The other 20% should have fit me, according to the size chart, but for some reason had really strange issues such as the above. This is a huge shame as Lindy Bop provide lovely, affordable styles, but I don't think I am alone in wishing that they would ensure that the fit of their items is spot on, never mind the sizing. 

I don't want to give up on Lindy Bop completely just yet, as some of the items I have received from them recently have been perfect, but I do hope that they sort out these niggles!

- x - LMDW - x -