Corporate Curves Report: Bold Patterns – Taifun Dress Review

In my style inspiration post about The Good Wife, I mentioned buying a similar style dress as this knitted top on the character Robyn Burdine.

Like Robyn’s top, my Taifun dress has solid arms that are different from the patterned body. It also has shoulder details.

This dress is one of my surprise purchases from my personal shopper experience. Originally Else had brought a skirt in this pattern, but I did not like it. I’m more of a dress person and also did not like how it cut my body into three blocks: top, skirt and legs. I felt it drew too much attention to my midsection, which is not what I wish to highlight!

Then we spotted a dress version of the skirt on the rack of new items brought for her to review earlier that morning. It happened to be my size so I tried it on and loved it. I hesitated because I was afraid the pattern would make my bust look super wide. However, I was in the mood to just try on anything and make my mind up after, not before, so I bought it.

The shoulder detail saves this dress on me. When a pattern continues to cover the shoulders, it can be a disaster on my busty and broad shouldered frame because it emphasizes the width of the whole top body. Instead, here the shoulder detail separates the shoulders from the bust area and gives an edge to the whole look of the dress.

The wide side seam narrows the waist area so while yes, the bust is a little enhanced, it does create more of an hourglassy look than what I really am with my fairly narrow hips. With the top-to-bottom pattern, it doesn’t draw particular attention to the bust area or chop me in three like the skirt did, but instead the eye is drawn to the complete pattern itself.

I also like the back of this dress. Often the detail is only on one side, but this dress is identical on both sides. The thick ponte material is super comfortable to wear, does not crease easily and is warm for the winter.

One small gripe, though, is that the hem sits much higher on me than on the model. I’m fine with shorter dresses, but I would rather wear my hems just above the knee like on the picture with the model wearing the dress. I’m wondering if it’s because the bust inches the dress to sit higher?

The pattern is so strong that I might grow bored of it in time, but at least for now it’s one of the pieces in my wardrobe that I wear often.