Handmade in Venice

And this dress, a maxi By Hand London Anna, shall henceforth be known as my “Venice Dress”. I made it a few weeks before we went on holiday, and you saw it here, specifically to take to wear in Venice. I had visions of beautiful Italian women in gorgeous flowing dresses and, while Venice was a little overrun with tourists, they were quite dressed up so, for once, I didn’t look out of place – yes!
I packed the dress with Venice in mind so didn’t want to wear it on holiday before we got to Venice, so I saved it for our last night, although I did kind of wish I’d worn it the evening before when we snapped some gorgeous sunset photos – those are still to come. Nevertheless, I managed to get a few pictures on just one of Venice’s hundreds (thousands?!) of bridges with the dress blowing in the breeze. To be honest it was more than a little breezy that evening and I did wish I’d sewn some pennies into the hem to weight it down a little as I’m pretty sure I flashed my knickers to a few unsuspecting tourists through that thigh split – sorry!

And look – I even managed to get Ben dressed up for the evening too! To be fair to him, he did take several short sleeved shirts on holiday for smarter evening wear and wore them quite a bit. This was a navy Next shirt (he’s found Next shirts to be really good quality and nice designs) with a pair of longer Primark shorts (we just got a Primark in York, #sorrynotsorry for the amount of basics we’ve bought from there already) and a pair of (shock, horror!) Crocs! I’m letting him off with these ones though as they’re slip on canvas ones rather than the infamous clog version of Crocs which I despair of my family wearing (I swear they do it because it upsets me :D) – sorry if you’re a fan of them, I just don’t get them! I mean, he could have got a perfectly nice version of slip on shoes like these ones that aren’t associated with Crocs, but then again, I’m also guilty of wearing (non-clog!) Crocs on holiday too – although I forgot them on this holiday, woops!

The weather in Venice was hot and quite humid, although, as I mentioned, there was quite a breeze, especially this evening, so this outfit was perfect for this. The cotton lawn I used to make it is very lightweight, but it does crease easily especially round the bodice and waist.
I actually managed to accessorize an outfit for once too! I was wearing my silver sandals from ASOS that have made appearances a couple of times now – they’re ideal holiday and summer shoes for me with the open toe and ability to slip them on and off really quickly – I’m impatient and prefer kicking off my shoes a lot! The necklace is an old one from Primark which first made an appearance on the blog in February 2012 (wow!) and used to be a staple piece. And of course, sunglasses are entirely necessary in Venice – these are from a local vintage shop.

Make sure you check out my other post about Venice – it’s a massive travel guide, I got a bit carried away!