Hunting for fairies in a hippy floaty red dress

Chris and I had discovered the location online and seen from photos how green the place was going to be with all the moss clinging to hibernating ancient oak branches. So, as it was also likely to be fairly shaded, the colour red was the obvious choice of clothing to showcase for this photo shoot. This is a gorgeous long-sleeved red floaty dress from the brand Romacci.

The red maxi dress is cotton and loose fitting so it’s one of those items of clothing that are just easy to wear and so comfortable. The way the skirt half is layered with smooth cotton underneath and crinkle cotton over the top at a different length gives the dress interest and texture – important when you’re wearing so much of a single bright colour. And this red really did stand out!

We took the photos at Wistman’s Wood at Dartmoor National Park in Devon. It’s one of the best places in the South-West for fairy-spotting, so I kept the corners of my eyes open for any magical sightings. Sadly, I think it was too full of tourists and walkers that day and I think they were feeling shy. If you’d like to know more, here’s my blog post about our trip to Wistman’s Wood, and this is my YouTube video of the day. I thought this dress has a hippie or pagan feel, so it’s really the perfect item of clothing for the place.

For the sake of the fashion photography, I wore either bare feet or red ballet shoes for these photos, however, for normal every-day outfits, I’d choose either black boots or my dark grey Art Company lagenlook shoes to wear with the dress. When the weather warms up it would also look really nice styled with neutral sandals.

I have a black pagan style dress exactly the same and liked it enough to buy in red as well! At this time of year, when spring can’t be relied upon and half the time it still feels like the freezing gales of winter, having a long sleeved dress is really nice for that extra bit of warmth. I actually often layer a jumper over the top of this dress so it looks like a skirt. I have to be honest, this dress isn’t the most flattering in the world, so if that’s something you’re worried about, wearing a jumper breaks up the expanse of colour and adds a bit of shape. It looks great layered under a hippy jacket I have, and that’s how I wore it when we went to Stonehenge for summer solstice last year.