Four ways to wear one slip dress in 34°C

The hardest part of dressing here isn't the heat. It's the twenty-degree swing between the MRT platform and a meeting room. A slip dress solves more of that than it looks like it should — provided you treat it as a base layer rather than a finished outfit.

We took one dress — the Nude Slip, one size, 86cm long — and wore it four times in a day. Nothing was ironed between changes. Everything else in the outfit came from pieces already in this month's edit.

01 · Morning, with a knit over the top

Pull a fine knit over the dress and let the hem show below. It reads as a skirt, keeps your shoulders covered for the office, and takes ten seconds. The Delicate Pink Knit is the only knit we carry that survives an aircon-to-street transition without making you sweat through it.

02 · Midday, shawl on the shoulders

A shawl is the least committed layer there is: on for the meeting, off for the walk, folded into a bag the size of a paperback. Ours comes as part of the Marine Set, which is the cheaper way to buy it.

“If a piece only works in one temperature, it doesn't come home with us. That's most of what we reject.”

Mije, founder

03 · Evening, straps out

Shorten the straps by two notches and the neckline sits higher, which changes the dress more than any layer does. Add one heavy piece of jewellery and stop there.

04 · What we'd skip

A blazer. Every time we've tried it here the dress ends up creased under the arms by lunch, and you carry it for the rest of the day. A shawl does the same job for a fifth of the weight.