Introducing Addressed, a weekly column where we’ll, ahem, address the joys (and tribulations!) of getting dressed. We’ll look at runway and real-life trends, talk to people whose style we love, and, most importantly, answer your fashion queries. Download the Vogue app, and find our Style Chat section to submit your question.
On the Vogue app, user Pelam1ch asks: How does one dress in bold layering while being five feet four and not end up looking like the chair everyone has in their bedroom?
This is a great question, and not just because the mention of the chair made everyone absolutely lose it at the office. But before we get started, we must acknowledge one thing: If you want to truly enter the world of bold layering delights, there’s no getting away from the chair. You must become one with the chair. Embrace the chair so that you may transcend it.
No, I haven’t lost my mind. What I mean to say is that we cannot desire boldness without first letting go of the fear—in this case, the fear of looking like Joey that one time he put on all of the clothes in Chandler’s closet on Friends. And while some trends do indeed look better under the magic lights of the runway and on statuesque model bodies, I am happy to report that dressing in layers is not one of them. Just look at Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen. At five feet one and five feet two, respectively, they’ve popularized the definitive version of layering in our time through their personal style and collections for The Row. But still, there’s a method to the madness, so I’ve rounded up some boldly layered looks from recent collections that I think can be helpful ways of experimenting with more extreme silhouettes.
We’ll start with the Rabanne spring 2025 collection, one of my favorites in recent seasons, where Julien Dossena showed jackets layered over jackets layered over shirts layered over more shirts over short skirts or boxer shorts. What I loved about it the most was that it felt like a new silhouette that was editorial but perfectly attainable in real life. The way Dossena achieved this was by paying careful attention to the proportions: All the shirts and jackets are approximately the same length, so all the action is contained within a kind of box on the top half of the body. Appropriately, Rabanne described the proportions as “a box with legs.” Another thing to keep in mind when layering this many pieces together is the color palette, especially when mixing patterns. It doesn’t mean that everything needs to be matchy-matchy; it just needs to work well together.
The next level of layering comes courtesy of Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour, who knows her way around an expertly layered look. Taymour’s composition is more straightforward—a dress or skirt layered over pants—but her maximalist vision encompasses bonus accessories like peplums, ruffled half-skirt belts, or oversized crossover ruffled bags that add additional textural elements to an outfit. To manage this kind of layering, you may want to figure out which length of dress or skirt looks best over trousers—my inkling would be right above the knee—along with the kinds of pieces you layer with. For example, a shirt, a skirt, and trousers will break up the lines of your body in three separate places, and perhaps you’ll find you prefer the longer lines of a dress over a skirt. Once again, this method works because of a unifying color palette, with contrast being created through the different fabric textures, and the silhouette remains fairly languid, meaning that although many pieces are worn on top of each other, they do not create any exaggerated volume. Finish with a chunky shoe to ground the look.
Once you’ve mastered these two approaches—shall we call them the long and short of it?—you’ll no longer fear the chair and will be ready for the final level, overloading on frills à la Valentino’s Alessandro Michele or even expertly layering bulbous pieces like you’re Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. Good luck!
