The best boho midi-dresses

Usually a lightweight summer option, the calf-grazing midi dress has been re-engineered by a host of designers for the autumn/winter months

The past decade has seen the bohemian look boomerang in and out of summer style – swinging from cool to clichéd with alarming alacrity.

Generally, the ruffles, prints and romantic detailing that so define the hippy-dippy aesthetic are restricted to just those summer months, and are packed away at the end of the heady days and hot nights. For 2015, however, haute bohemia continues to ride high, albeit in a slightly darker incarnation.

That’s in large part thanks to Valentino, where creative directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli have consistently imbued their collections with folkloric references, intricate detailing and billowing skirts regardless of season.

For winter, Clare Waight Keller of Chloe followed them down the hippy trail with elongated chiffon and velvet dresses tapping into the label’s signature Seventies penchant for the flowing, floaty and ethereal. Burberry and Lanvin were eager advocates of the louche, long-line dresses too.

As that style consensus would suggest, there are plenty of high street stalwarts tapping into this ever-popular trend wholeheartedly. Tops and tunics are a subtle nod, but the biggest bohemian style of the season is the midi dress.

Patterned, embellished or embroidered, the motifs remain the same. But for winter, chiffons are replaced with heavier materials to make the look a more practical proposition; spaghetti straps swapped for long sleeves and high necklines, making it a demure enough choice for even the strictest dress code.