Ethical Details: Dress – Tamga Designs; Tank Top – ancient; Shoes – Nisolo Huarache
Open back dresses are flattering, but who besides travel bloggers and beach bums has a context to where them? I repeated this question to myself for about a year before deciding to throw practicality to the wind and buy the dress anyway.
I had a bright yellow dress in college that I wore constantly even after my friend’s roommate told me it was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen. Yellow, especially yards of it, is such a cheerful and satisfying thing to wear that it didn’t really bother me that some random guy thought it was gross. I eventually grew out of that dress and donated it to a thrift shop, but I never forgot how I felt wearing it.
This Tamga Designs dress was just what I wanted except that darn open back. But I decided it would work perfectly well with a tank top or t-shirt on normal days. And maybe someday when I go on a tropical vacation, I’ll get a chance to wear it as intended.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I never alter the way I wear clothes to portray them more elegantly on the blog. So the bra straps are showing and that’s ok.
Leah Wise is the founder of StyleWise Blog. She has been writing, speaking, and consulting on sustainable fashion, the fair trade and secondhand supply chain, and digital marketing for over ten years. An Episcopal priest, Leah holds a B.A. in Religion from Florida State University and an M.Div. from Yale Divinity School. When not working, you can find her looking for treasures at the thrift store.