taken when I was still pregnant
So this review has been sitting in my drafts folder for a very long time since I first purchased this cotton Harlow dress (link to the Harlow page on ES) back when Elizabeth Suzann had a sale for them at the end of 2018. I’ve wanted to try the Harlow dress for a long time, ever since seeing campaign images from ES like the one below.
Something about the easiness and swinginess of the dress got me. But since the linen and silk versions are $245 and $265 respectively, I was a bit hesitant to spend that much on an easy summer dress. Also I thought the linen one might be too voluminous for my frame and the silk too fancy for daily wear. So when the cotton poplin Harlow went “on sale” (due to ES phasing out the cotton fabric for this style) for sub $200 I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately it was the dead of winter when I got it, so it was just in time to wear it for Christmas (that’s when the first photo above was taken). I was able to pull it off layered (while pregnant) but didn’t really have a chance to wear it much after that.
But now that it’s summer, I am loving this dress. It’s so easy to wear and comfy (basically like a nightie). I like that the cotton poplin is lightweight without being too voluminous. But the cotton does wrinkle pretty easily and it picks up lint and dog hair like crazy. If I end up wearing this dress a lot, I’ll consider splurging on the silk version.
Oh and as for sizing, I decided to get a medium because I didn’t want any pulling in the chest area. I’m usually a small in ES, but when you look at the Harlow pages on their site, when the model is wearing a smaller size the dress kind of pulls at the chest. It makes the chest area look more like an X in the front, while I wanted it to look more like a tank, with the shoulder part dropping straight down. But that does mean the dress is a tad large on me and you can see my bra band in the back. I think if you’re wearing a black bra, no one’s going to notice. Or make it fun and wear a really outrageous color bra and it’ll just peek out over the dress.
And even though there’s a lot of fabric with this dress, which can billow out with the wind (so don’t really wear it on a super windy day), you actually won’t look big in it because of the way it drapes. If you want to make it look even more slimming, a belt at the natural waist might work too. As for me, I can’t wait to wear this with some straw accessories and call it a summer day!
P.S. I just got the silk Harlow dress secondhand via eBay and it totally feels different. I love it so much!