Claire's Pick of the Best Blue Mini Dresses

I spent a solid two years thinking blue mini dresses were a one trick pony, strictly for hen dos and the sort of night that ends with you eating chips on a curb at 2am. Turns out I just hadn’t met the right ones. A good blue mini dress does something almost no other colour manages, it reads as bold and put together at the same time, which is a hard trick to pull off in one garment.

What makes one actually work is the shade doing some thinking for you. Cobalt and electric blue have a confidence that means you barely need to accessorise, they carry a room on their own. Navy and denim toned blues behave more like a neutral, closer to black but with a bit more warmth, and they’re the ones that quietly do the most wear over a season because they don’t fight with anything else in your bag or on your feet.

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The fabric matters more than people admit too, a slippery satin blue mini catches light and looks expensive from three metres away, while the same dress in a stiff synthetic can look like fancy dress. Feel the material before you commit, that’s the whole secret.

Styling wise, I’ve made every mistake going.

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Cream heels with a bright blue mini once made me look like a wedding guest who’d wandered in from the wrong ceremony. What actually works is contrast that feels considered rather than accidental, gold jewellery against a deep blue, a black blazer thrown over it for anything remotely daytime, or a battered leather jacket if you’re trying to stop it looking too neat. Tan boots do something lovely to the darker blues in fact, taking them from party to pub without breaking a sweat.

Occasion wise this is the dress you reach for when you want to look like you tried without announcing that you tried. Birthday dinners, a wedding where you’re not sure how dressy is too dressy, a date where you want colour but not a full look. It’s also, and I will die on this hill, one of the few colours that photographs well under absolutely any lighting, warm pub bulbs, harsh flash, grey afternoon outside a bar. Everything else in your closet can be a gamble under fluorescent lights. Blue never lets you down.