What I wore this week: a summer dress you can actually wear

I don’t know about you, but skipping through meadows chasing butterflies is not something that takes up a huge proportion of my time, not even on bank holiday weekends in spring. Am I the only one whose leisure hours do not stretch out beneath fluffy clouds, like Lily James in a Disney film, with a schedule that reads: pull on flimsy dress, skip around under fluffy clouds, lie down in long grass for picturesque nap?

I ask only because I had a free half hour the other day and quite fancied a quick retail hit, but was thwarted by the fact that every dress on the shop floor was from the chasing-butterflies school of summer dressing – pale, floral, flimsy, with ruffles and ribbons just asking to trail prettily on a light breeze.

I would like a pretty summer dress, but one I can actually wear. Ruffles droop on me and ribbon ties are more likely to get caught in the tube doors than on the summer breeze. And a pale, Monet-toned dress is lovely, but what to wear with it when it gets chilly? On fashion shoots, it is normal for models to feel cold in what they are wearing. But I don’t like being cold, so skipping out of the door in nothing more than an off-the-shoulder frock and a spritz of perfume isn’t an option.

Catwalk fashion has a much more grown-up, wearable approach to what a summer dress should look like in 2016 than the supposedly real-life high street. (Shame about the price tags, but you can’t have everything.) There is a style of dress that you might call the “Valentino”, after the label that owns the look: a simple flat, square bodice piece the size and shape of a large hankie, no collar, a seam but no belt at the waist, long slim sleeves, and a moodily dark floral print. This has been a fashion week look for a while, but is beginning – as in this Warehouse number – to appear on the high street. It is dreamy in an appealing way (this is not a dress for power meetings) without being butterfly-chasing. It is a dress you could actually wear, on a bank holiday weekend in spring. Happy days.

• Jess wears dress, £120, warehouse.co.uk. Shoes, £56, topshop.com. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management