Could This Be The 2021 Version Of THAT Polka Dot Zara Dress?

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Cast your minds back to the heady days of summer 2019… the champagne flowed, nightclubs thronged, and at any barbeque or work drinks (remember those?) you breezed into maskless there was a 98.5 per cent chance you would find at least two women wearing the exact same dress.

I am of course talking about that £40 black and white polka dot Zara maxi that went so explosively viral it even got its own Instagram account.

Fast-forward two years and the Champagne’s been switched for post-EU sparkling wine, the barbeque guestlist dwindled and office parties are as rare as Hancocks apologies, but it would seem our appetite for a giant sack dress storms on undeterred. The 2021 version of that Zara dress? A £59.99 yellow gingham cotton maxi from Mango.

Puff-sleeved, v-neck and as capacious and easy-to-wear as its Zara cousin, the dress has already been spotted by ES staff on friends, tube-travellers and fellow shoppers. In fact, it has completely sold out (there are just a few left across the whole of Europe apparently) and, unfortunately for those herd dressing hopefuls, will not be restocked.

There are however several other equally lovely ways to dress like your favourite picnic blanket. H&M has a sweet smock-front spaghetti strap gingham maxi that comes in baby pink and buttercup yellow (£39.99 H&M.com) and ASOS, which has seen sales of its own-brand gingham maxi dresses increase 300 per cent year on year, has a range of 60-odd gingham dresses, among them an excellent monochrome v-neck maxi (£35, asos.com) and a tiered red number (£32, asos.com) that’s flying off the shelves.

London label Kitri had such a runaway success with its gingham Margot dress at the end of last summer that its brought it back for 2021 in additional colours. “Back by popular demand, our coveted Margot gingham dress currently has a high waiting list and is the most popular style of the capsule,” says founder Haeni Kim, who’s also added another gingham midi dress to the range for summer called the Regina, this time a super flattering belted and long-sleeved shape.

So what is it we love so much about a giant wafting gingham maxi? Well, what’s not to love? It’s timeless, it suits all shapes and sizes, it’s put-together without being dressy and in a summer of stalled freedom days and restricted dancefloors, a hit of sunshine yellow gingham is just the sort check-ered cheerfulness we all need. So go on, gingham what they want.

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