The style challenge for Mother's Day was bohemian and red. I put two looks together for the theme: one I wore in the morning and the other — a sedate, less gypsy, more 1920s Paris — was for high tea lunch at Ballantynes.

Whilst both outfits were lovely — and the white and red version certainly garnered positive comments from strangers at the carpark —  my favourite of the two was this romantic gypsy version in an almost indecent mini-length.

The dress does all the work because this kind of bohemian is all about colour, clashing prints and plenty of fabric. Add shape with a belt in the required colour, pop on a pair of cherry red boots and finish with bling in gold. Done!

What do I love about this? The labeless mini-dress was a thrifted find so it was inexpensive. So was the belt. The chiffon, in great volume, has lots of movement: I feel light and a bit of a flower child in it, even if I wouldn't lean over in public.

The strange thing is that at age twenty-four I took on a step-mother role for pre-adolescent children and had to get very serious, very fast. And I was already pretty serious for a twenty-something woman. In my tech-hedonist life this meant stopping gaming until the early hours of the morning and in my style life this was dressing as an adult because arguing with a teenager about the length of her school kilt seems a bit double-standard if you're guilty of the same.


Over the last few years, as the children have become adults themselves and we have become a childless household, I've felt able to return to doing things without concern that I am being a bad example. These days, the example I want to set for my kids is to be relaxed about who they are and be empowered young women. I want for them to know their own minds, own their decisions and to have their own sense of style: both in life and in clothes.

All this means that I'm even more relaxed as a thirty-six year old about how fanciful my outfits are and how much leg I'm showing. If being bohemian is about being free-spirited and being yourself then I think part of what excites me about this outfit is that it was exactly who I felt like and exactly what I wanted to wear at that moment.