The Style Files: White Hot 

A pale colour palette adds an understated sophistication to clean-cut staples. When things heat up its time to lighten up especially with a white hot dress.

Maybe it's the Wimbledon effect with its all white on court dress code, the idea of the purity of a win, the ability for rebirth on court after a previous defeat? They’re ideas that have apparently caught on with a multitude of fashion pacesetters, who, as the season advances, are casting aside flashy patterns and bright colors of the recent past in favor of that confectioner’s dream: the little white dress, rendered virginal, sweet and  downright doll-like, in lace and eyelet, Broderie Anglaise or layer upon layer of gossamer tulle.

Emma Roberts (left) and Millie Mackintosh (right)

The white dress is trending. White is optimistic and you can spin it in a lot of different ways. It appeals to women looking for something airy and romantic. The white dress has definitely reached that point of critical mass. White is a big blank canvas: You can make it whatever you want it to be. You can style it up really sweet, or you can rock it. That’s why women, whether they’re fashion-forward or conservative, seem to be embracing it.

Lea Michele

The eloquent absence of color has inspired a multitude of designers, whose collections at times evoked a Victorian laundry. Claire Wright Keller of Chloé introduced a wafty embroidered pinafore suspended from thin straps; at Valentino, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli offered a minidress embellished with a tree-of-life design; and Nicolas Ghesquière of Louis Vuitton showed a high-neck lacelike dress, its maidenly look simultaneously suggesting a temple virgin alighted from some faraway planet.

Serena Williams

The little white dress is on the rise instead of  the little black one. It’s possible that the current fascination with it is in part the resurgent romance with the late ’60s and ’70s and, as forcefully, to the ubiquitous images of white-frocked  celebs and  festival goers trailing a waft of bohemia. Or maybe its just that wedding season brings out our inner girlishness and sense of romance, whatever the reason white has never been more popular.

By Minoli Ratnayake