How Dresses Lost Their Sleeves →
Apparently, it's challenging to make a dress with sleeves that look good.
To designers, sleeves can be frumpy. They also pose design challenges. Sleeve peeves may be rising in part because it is so tricky to make a flattering sleeve that is roomy enough to offer a full range of motion. With more casual styles and the introduction of stretch fabrics from denim to silk, women have grown accustomed to comfort, and they are more likely to revolt against constrictive clothing.
“In the past, the tolerance for uncomfortable clothing was a lot higher than it is now,” says designer Trina Turk.
… But office clothing, with its tailored and more-fitted look, poses a design challenge. Structured construction makes it difficult to add a sleeve that allows complete freedom of movement, unless the fabric is stretchy. Ms. Turk’s ponte-knit “Monarch” dress style has slim, elbow-length sleeves that work because the knit fabric stretches.
So, mostly, dresses are sleeveless because the designers just give up.
Ms. Lepore, known for her curvy, flirty, colorful boho designs, says with each collection she aims to have a balance of sleeved and sleeveless dresses. Sleeves, she says, can make a dress look dowdy.
In Ms. Lepore’s recent resort collection, one tribal-look dress went through several iterations. It started with an elbow-length sleeve. The design team stared at the sample in the mirror trying to figure out why it wasn’t working. They tried a cap sleeve. Still wrong.
The dress wound up sleeveless.