Green & Gold Ankara Blazer Dress - Made to Measure

A tailored Ankara blazer dress in green and gold African print, cut to your own measurements. Above the knee, long sleeves, lapel collar. This is African print built for a room where you have to be taken seriously. The blazer construction does the work: a sharp lapel, a defined shoulder and a clean line through the waist, so the print reads as deliberate rather than loud. It is the difference between wearing Ankara and wearing a suit that happens to be Ankara. The cloth is a gold ground crossed with bands of bright green, with small blocks of pink and lilac set inside the bands and a visible weave to the surface. It is warmer and busier than a thumbnail suggests, and that is the point. It photographs well and it holds its colour under office lighting, which is where most print dresses fall down. Where it works: the office, church, a conference, a graduation, a registry wedding, a product launch or a shoot. Anywhere you want to be the most composed person in the room without defaulting to black. Style it the way it is shot: a plain court shoe and one good gold chain. The dress carries the pattern, so the jewellery only has to pick up the gold in the cloth rather than compete with it. Sizing and fit: there is no size chart here, because there are no sizes. You send six measurements at checkout, each with a short guide on how to take it, and the dress is cut to those numbers rather than made in a standard size and taken in afterwards. That is why it holds its line through the shoulder and the waist, which is the part an off-the-peg blazer almost always gets wrong. Each dress is cut from a length of Ankara by hand, so the exact placement of the print across the panels varies from one piece to the next. No two are identical. Care: cold hand wash or a gentle machine cycle inside out, hang to dry out of direct sun, and press on a low heat on the reverse to keep the print sharp.