What is a sundress and why is it seen as such a quintessential clothing item?

A heated discussion about one of the most ubiquitous garments grapples with questions like femininity and tradition. Photo: The New York Times

Many people say sundresses are bright and floral, maybe blue or yellow. White is widely accepted. Pastels are classic. Black is divisive. No one really talks about grey.

On the resale platform Depop, a seller named Bianca Steele listed a “Boho Black Sundress 100% Viscose sundress made in India”.

The inky maxi was “most definitely” a sundress, Steele wrote over the in-app messenger, adding that she had personally enjoyed black sundresses for over four decades. She owns at least 10.

But Jeannie Stith, CEO of Color Guru, a seasonal colour analysis company, said she can’t condone a black sundress.

“In general, black has been sold to us as a universal colour,” she said. “It’s actually not.”

Stith said universally flattering shades had a mix of warm and cool tones. For sundresses, that includes peony, periwinkle, teal and sage.

While out in lower Manhattan, three sundress-wearers – blocks apart – said a sundress can be any colour that makes you happy.

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'Fitted top, flowy bottom'

“You’ve left me no choice but to mansplain women’s fashion,” Randy Trembacki told viewers on TikTok in May.

Trembecki, a 30-year-old podcast producer based in Texas, named some features of a sundress: fitted top, flowy bottom.

On the phone last month, he elaborated: “It’s conservative but revealing. You know music videos circa early 2010s, where it’s the farmer’s daughter type thing?”

But he acknowledged that his viewpoint was not shared by some. Much of the feedback he received on his original TikTok came from Black viewers with different ideas about the quintessential sundress.

“The Black community’s preference for form-fitting, long dresses might emphasise a different aspect of allure, one that focuses on visual appeal and the celebration of body contours,” said Shelby Ivey Christie, a fashion historian and former board member of the Black in Fashion Council.

With a sleeve or not?

Dictionary definitions of “sundress” typically stipulate sleeveless-ness.

But how thick is a strap before it becomes a sleeve? Do you have to see shoulder? What about tube tops?

James Hamilton Butler, the director of the associate degree fashion design programme at Parsons School of Design, shrugged off the question. Talking about sleeves is outdated, he wrote over email.

“We can be who we want without fear of judgment. Not sure about tube tops though!”

Sophie Strauss, who calls herself “a stylist for regular people,” said the question of sleeves depends on what the wearer wants out of the sundress.

In Los Angeles, she sees clients gravitate toward the garment because it tends to “play up parts of women’s bodies we’re told to play up, and downplay parts we’re told to hide,” she said, rattling off brands with big puffy sleeves.

Trembacki was not so dogmatic on straps either. “There should be some type of strap,” he said. “Though, there could be no strap, too.”

Practical or otherwise

At some point in recent years, the sundress – traditionally homely and demure – came to take on a peculiar sexual charge.

What is it that makes “men go crazy for ‘the sundress,’” as a user on X recently put it?

Kyle Brown, a writer who lives in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and has a biceps tattoo of Joan Didion, offered some insight into the contemporary male gaze.

“It’s all about this pastoral American fantasy,” Brown said, describing a passionate scene involving a man who has come in from doing yardwork to find his sundress-clad wife in the kitchen baking bread. “Men are confused.”

On the street, more practical considerations still prevail.

Lexi Hide, a photographer who was wearing a Chopova Lowena dress on Fifth Avenue on a hot day, explained her reasoning: “I was thinking that a sundress has to be airy enough to make you not want to wear underwear.”

She clarified that she just likes how it feels.

“Nice warm breeze,” she said.

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'Whatever you want it to be'

It may be that the sundress is more of an idea than an article of clothing. After canvassing lower Manhattan for a potential consensus, I stopped in to Reformation, a clothing store some consider the mothership of sundresses.

I couldn’t remember the particular sundress Strauss, the personal stylist, had mentioned, only that it was named after a type of pasta.

When I asked a salesperson for help, she encouraged me to consider any dress in the store. A sundress is whatever you want it to be, she said, pointing me to a mini fit-and-flare in the shade “Last Tango”. – The New York Times