beautiful dress, tricky fit, and stubborn zipper
"The quality of the fabric is absolutely lovely! The fashion fabric is like this sheer cotton voile, light and floaty, and the lining is indeed a full lining so the overall dress is still opaque (thankfully). I love the self-covered buttons on the sleeves which feel very 1940s luxe, although the cuffs are maybe a little wide--but I've got skinny wrists so that might be a Me Problem. The most important thing is that I feel like an expensive, Pre-Raphaelite model wearing this dress (I could take or leave the hood--fortunately the attachments are totally hidden so when you remove the hood it doesn't look like anything is missing). The size chart indicated that I would probably be a medium but I ended up having to size down to a small because of the cut. The non-gathered waist of this dress sits between the bust and the natural waist, depending on your height, so your ribcage width is going to be the most important size factor. I have a fairly small ribcage compared to the rest of my body so the medium ended up looking sad and droopy on me and the small was much better! I've said it runs large because that was my own experience, but depending on your proportions and body type you may have a different fit experience. Remaining issues include: it's super long. If you're tall, this will be great for you! As an average size person, I'll definitely need to get it hemmed an inch or two, and hopefully that doesn't throw off the proportions of the flounce. Also, the zipper is a MENACE! It invariably gets stuck at the waist seam and requires a lot of wiggling and tugging to get it to continue up--this is an issue when the dress isn't being worn too, so it's not a size thing. I could have just gotten a dress where the stitch line gets too close to the zipper teeth, so YMMV Bottom line--if you have a smaller ribcage, size down. If your ribcage runs wider, stick to the size chart. If the zipper gets stuck, it's probably not your fault. Unless you're tall, you will need to get this dress hemmed. However, given the quality and beauty of the dress, the price is still worth it for me even with these caveats."
