I Shop for a Living, and I Swear Every Dress I'm Seeing RN Looks Like This
I spend a lot of time every day looking through page after page of dresses, constantly searching for the newest ones with the most potential for viral success. And after scrolling past one too many of the same dress styles we've been seeing season after season, I noticed something: All of the ones I was saving looked almost identical. Specifically, they all featured a drop waist, most often accompanied with a V-shaped, corset-like silhouette. Ears perked, I began to do some digging.
From what I could gather, the almost princess-like dress trend first came about (for 2022, that is) in Khaite's resort 2022 collection in the form of sleek, low-waisted black gowns with full skirts and elevated long-sleeve dresses with cutouts and bubble hems. A few weeks after the collection dropped in June, Kendall Jenner announced her latest edit for Fwrd on Instagram while wearing a simpler, more wearable version of Khaite's drop-waist dresses that featured thin tank-top straps and a V-shaped waist. Later in the summer, a similar style of dress from Abercrombie went viral on TikTok, leading to a sellout of epic proportions.
As a result, look-alike dresses are now practically ubiquitous, as proven by my most recent virtual shopping trip. So to mark the moment, I went ahead and rounded up all of the chicest drop-waist dresses on the market. Shop them all below.
See how people are wearing drop-waist dresses in 2022:
Shop the drop-waist dress trend:
This dress broke the internet, and for good reason. It's stunning.
Every time I go on to Shopbop, I see this dress and consider buying it. Maybe today is the day.
The holiday season is coming up faster than you think. This is the dress you should be wearing when it arrives.
I recently saw this dress on Tembe Denton-Hurst and fell for it immediately.
If you don't know Esse Studios, here's an excuse to look up the Aussie brand's pieces. They're all gorgeous.
Jennifer Lawrence wore this dress for a summer day, so now I want to wear this dress for a summer day.
What did I tell you about Esse Studios? Like, this dress is perfect.
My co-worker Erin spotted this dress on the streets at Copenhagen Fashion Week, and if that's not a reason to buy it, I don't know what is.
If this dress is still available in your size, I suggest buying it immediately. It won't stay in stock for long.
If you want to feel like the chicest person in the room, wear this dress.
If you're a fan of bold patterns, go with this incredible option by Autumn Adeigbo.
Next: This $88 Abercrombie Dress Went Viral on TikTok Thanks to a Chic 61-Year-Old
Eliza Huber is a New York City–based fashion editor who specializes in trend reporting, brand discovery, and celebrity style. She joined Who What Wear in 2021 after almost four years on the fashion editorial team at Refinery29, the job she took after graduating with a marketing degree from the University of Iowa. She has since launched two monthly columns, Let's Get a Room and Ways to Wear; profiled the likes of Dakota Fanning, Diane Kruger, Katie Holmes, and Sabrina Carpenter for WWW's monthly cover features; and reported on everything from the relationship between Formula One and fashion to the top trends from fashion month, season after season. Eliza now lives on the Upper West Side and spends her free time researching F1 fashion imagery for her side Instagram accounts @thepinnacleoffashion and @f1paddockfits, running in Central Park, and scouring eBay for '90s Prada and '80s Yves Saint Laurent.
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