A-line, mini-dress, empire waist, sundress and so many more. The styles of dresses available to women today are almost endless. And it’s a good thing, because it’s time for Wear a Dress Day!
Wear a Dress Day Timeline
Tailored gowns emerge in Europe
Women’s gowns in medieval Europe develop fitted bodices and fuller skirts, establishing a basic dress silhouette that shapes Western fashion for centuries.
Steel cage crinoline transforms skirt shapes
The introduction of the steel cage crinoline replaces heavy layered petticoats, allowing skirts to reach extreme widths while remaining lighter and more practical to wear.
The little black dress is popularized
French designer Coco Chanel presents a simple black crepe dress in Vogue, helping to establish the little black dress as a modern and versatile wardrobe staple.
Bias-cut gowns revolutionize dress drape
Designer Madeleine Vionnet perfects and popularizes the bias cut, allowing dresses to skim the body with new fluidity and changing how fabric behaves on the figure.
Mini dress becomes a global fashion symbol
Designer Mary Quant popularizes the mini dress in London, using radically short hemlines to reflect youth culture, changing ideas about femininity, and social change in the 1960s.
How to Celebrate Wear a Dress Day
Enjoy the delight of embracing that feminine side and getting dressed up in a skirt or a dress just for the fun of it on Wear a Dress Day. Observe the day with some of these ideas and activities:
Wear a Dress, of course!
Certainly the thing to do on a day such as today is to pull a dress out of the back of the closet and wear it! For women who wear a dress on the regular, this might not be that shocking but can still be fun.
But for those who typically have a life uniform of jeans and a t-shirt (or for the Hilary-Clinton-inspired women who normally wear pantsuits), Wear a Dress Day can certainly be a departure from the norm.
And, hey, who says this day only has to be for women? Perhaps some men want to get in on the action of Wear a Dress Day and surprise their coworkers or family members by donning a dress! It’s only fair and equal, after all.
Go Dress Shopping
Perhaps it has been a very long time since the need for a dress has arisen. So Wear a Dress Day can be the perfect excuse to go shopping for a new dress that will fit and flatter that beautiful figure.
Perhaps it will be in a boutique scenario like the one on Rodeo Drive à la Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
Or maybe it will be more like digging through discount racks or even a thrift store to see what vintage styles can be found. In any case, be sure to have fun!
History of Wear a Dress Day
Certainly the hard-fought battle making it acceptable for women to wear pants if they want was an important part of the feminist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
And though it is certainly every woman’s right now to wear trousers, vote, participate in the workplace and do pretty much anything a man does – this doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have the option to wear a dress every once in a while if she chooses!
Wear a Dress Day offers women a reminder that it can be fun, feminine and enjoyable to get dressed up just a bit, just because. So, the premise is easy and the instructions are in the name. Simply wear a dress!
Wear a Dress Day seems to have gotten its start in Bend, Oregon in 2010 when a group of folks were talking about how beautiful dresses are and how women might want to wear them more often.
The day soon spread through social media (it even had its own Facebook page for a while) and grew in numbers to reach more than 100,000 people in that first year.
Since that time, Wear a Dress Day has been celebrated each year at the beginning of June. And some die hard participants celebrate the day twice a year, by wearing a dress on the first day of December as well.
Facts About Wear a Dress Day
Unisex Origins of Dresses in Western Clothing
In Europe, garments resembling dresses began as essentially unisex clothing: long tunics and robes worn by men and women alike in ancient Greece and Rome, and later in the Middle Ages.
It was only from the 14th to 16th centuries that tailoring and fitted bodices started to sharply distinguish women’s gowns from men’s shorter doublets and hose, helping to cement the cultural idea of the “dress” as strongly associated with femininity.
When Men Commonly Wore “Dress-like” Garments
Around the world, many traditional garments that resemble dresses have historically been worn by men. Examples include the Greek fustanella, the Middle Eastern thawb and dishdasha, the South Asian kurta with long hemlines, and the Japanese yukata and kimono for men.
These outfits show that ankle-length or skirted garments are not inherently gendered, but gain their “masculine” or “feminine” labels from local culture and history.
The Miniskirt as a Symbol of Social Change
When designer Mary Quant popularized the miniskirt in the 1960s, hemlines rising above the knee became a flashpoint in debates about youth culture, sexual liberation, and women’s autonomy.
British newspapers reported that some workplaces and schools attempted to ban the style, while others embraced it as a symbol of a new, modern woman. Fashion historians now treat the miniskirt as one of the clearest examples of how a dress style can reflect deeper social and political shifts.
The “Little Black Dress” Was a Radical Idea
Before the 1920s, black clothing in Western fashion was largely associated with mourning or service work. In 1926, Vogue published a simple black dress design by Coco Chanel and predicted it would become “a sort of uniform for all women of taste.”
The idea that a plain, affordable, versatile black dress could be chic helped democratize elegance and changed how women dressed for both day and evening.
Wrap Dresses and the Rise of Practical Elegance
Introduced in the 1970s by Diane von Furstenberg, the modern jersey wrap dress was marketed as a professional yet feminine uniform for working women.
Its simple tie closure, wrinkle-resistant fabric, and body-skimming shape made it easy to pack, wear from office to evening, and wash at home, reflecting the needs of women entering corporate environments in greater numbers. Museums now collect early examples as milestones in late 20th-century dress design.
Clothes Can Subtly Change How People Think and Behave
Psychologists studying “enclothed cognition” have found that what people wear can influence attention, confidence, and decision-making.
In a well-known experiment, participants who put on a white “doctor’s coat” performed better on attention tests than those told the same garment was a painter’s coat, suggesting that the symbolic meaning of clothing can affect mental performance as well as how others perceive the wearer.
Dresses and the Environmental Cost of Fast Fashion
Dresses are a significant segment of the global womenswear market, which is part of an apparel industry responsible for an estimated 2 to 8 percent of worldwide carbon emissions.
Many modern dresses are made from resource-intensive fibers like cotton and synthetics such as polyester, which shed microplastics when washed.
Reports from the UN and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation highlight that choosing longer-lasting garments and recycling textiles are key strategies to reduce the environmental footprint of dress production and disposal.
