Where Can I Buy a Great Cocktail Dress?

A reader asks for advice on finding a frock that goes “beyond the nice-but-basic.”

During the summer of 2020, after the initial trauma of isolation, one of the popular sociological theories zipping around the fashionverse was that after months of slouching around in sweats and leggings, we would never want to climb out of them, that we would have become conditioned to sartorial sloth.

This always struck me as misguided.

Not just because of the basic physics of fashion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) but because of basic psychology. After all, if an item of clothing becomes intrinsically associated with a traumatic time, why would you want to continue wearing it when that time is over?