Fringed hem dress - mini dress discontinued by Coquette - review by Crystal1

The Fringed Hem Dress from Coquette is exactly what it sounds like: a very simple black slip/dress with fringe along the bottom hem! (Just think, you guys, someone got paid to name this.) This dress is a part of Coquette's "Kissable" collection, their lower priced lingerie and costume collection which is made up of around 80 styles, all of which come packaged in a little cardboard hanging box with the Kissable logo. (The Kissable collection replaced their former Signature collection in 2011.) Items in the Kissable collection tend to be around the $20 price point, and while the quality isn't up there with the higher end Coquette products, they're still usually well-made. I think of the Kissable collection as great "starter lingerie", perfect for those that don't have a ton of money to spend, but want the fun of trying out some new styles.

All you get here is the dress itself, no matching panties or other frilly things. I hesitate to call this a dress, because it realistically falls much more into the category of slip or nightgown. If I saw someone wearing this out in public, my first thought wouldn't be "Oh, cute dress!", but "Um.. did you forget to put the rest on?" For the sake of my review, I'm going to refer to it as a dress, though, because I'm lazy and that's easy.

This is a pretty simple little dress. It is fairly straight up and down, except for a bit of elastic sewn in the center of the bust area to add some shape there, and some ruching down towards the bottom. While I like the effect on the top, I'm a little on the fence about the bottom ruching. On one hand, it adds some interest to an otherwise very plain shape. On the other, the combination of gathered fabric and fringe really makes me think of a theatre curtain. The design makes the front of the dress a bit shorter than the back.

The dress has black ribbons for straps, and they have little sliders attached to make them adjustable. I personally prefer the elasticized, bra-style straps on my lingerie, but that's just me.

Then we have the titular feature, the fringe! The bottom hem of the dress is decorate with 3" long fringe all the way around. It's similar to what you'd see on a flapper dress. I can't begin to tell you how much fun it is to spin, shake and shimmy around while you're wearing this dress! Send the fringe flying! The fringe is nice quality, and the fabric that makes up the rest of the dress is nice and soft, too. Overall, the comfort level of this piece is pretty high.

The dress is only available in black, and it only comes in one size, which is said to fit sizes 4-14. The fabric (100% polyester) is pretty stretchy, so it will probably "fit" sizes 4-14 in the loosest sense of the term, but I'm not sure it would be a comfortable/flattering fit on all of those sizes. I have no experience being a size 4, since I don't think I've been smaller than a 10 since... well, longer than I can remember, but just from eyeballing the dress, I think it would most likely be a little baggy on anyone smaller than a 4. I'm a size 10/12, and the dress stretches to fit me, but it is VERY form-fitting. I would definitely never go out in public in something this clingy. I would be comfortable wearing it in the bedroom, though. I have a feeling it would probably be a very tight fit on a 12/14, especially around the top and bottom bands (which are less stretchy), but it would probably fit in the "I can get my body into this" sense. I'd estimate that this would best fit a size 6-8, which I guess is pretty standard for osfm items.

(continued)

This is a kind of difficult dress to measure, due to the bumps and dips in shape, but it's about 26" long from top to bottom including the fringe. The top elastic band is 12" across when laid flat, and will stretch to about 19". The band that the fringe is attached to at the bottom hem DOES NOT STRETCH. However, the way that the ruching causes the fringe to come up a bit higher in the front and lower in the back keeps you from having a solid, non-stretchy band around the bottom. Even with that extra allowance, though, the widest this can get at the bottom is 19".

I'm pretty tall (5'11") and this comes down far enough in the back that I don't feel like everything is hanging out, but it's not a length I'd feel comfortable wearing in public, even if the rest of the dress was less bedroomy. That said, I think this could be a really fun layering piece. You could pop it under all kinds of dresses or skirts to add fringe to the bottom of them. (Although you may have to wear it without the straps and pulled down a bit to do so.)

While this isn't a piece I expect to get a TON of use from, I do think it's a fun item to have. It makes a nice slip or nightgown (especially if you don't have cats that will attack the fringe), and would be perfect under a flapper costume. Just don't expect to be able to wear it as an actual *dress*, by any means.

(As a note... this was WAY too clingy on me for me to feel comfortable posting photos in it. However, the model pictured in the stock photo is 5'8" and 107 pounds, if that helps at all.)