If You Only Buy One Dress This Summer, Make It This Simple '90s Silhouette

Whenever I think of the defining pieces of '90s minimalism, my mind goes straight to a simple black silk slip dress. Worn by style icons from Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy to Kate Moss and seen on the runways of Calvin Klein, Miu Miu, and Ralph Lauren, it became one of the decade's most enduring silhouettes. Given my love of minimalist dressing and things that are timeless, it even surprised me that I didn't already own one. Then I realized why: I'd been holding out hope of finding the perfect one second-hand, much like my ongoing quest to find the perfect pair of vintage Levi's.

But as we head into mid-July, I've been thinking and writing a lot about how to dress during a heatwave, and the answer always comes back to natural fibers. Alongside cotton, silk is one of the most breathable fabrics to wear in hot weather, making a silk slip dress feel like the ideal one-and-done summer investment—and a wardrobe gap I wanted to fill. As I started my search, I immediately thought of the Australian label Silk Laundry.

Founded in 2015, the brand grew out of the founder's own obsession with the slip dresses of the '90s during her teenage years, and its very first design was aptly named the '90s Slip Dress. It has everything I'd been searching for: understated, lived-in, and form-fitting, capturing the effortless chicness of that era. For summer, it's the easiest throw-on-and-go dress I can wear with ballet flats, kitten-heel sandals, or my Worishofer wedges and be out the door. Shop the dress, along with more black silk slip dresses, below.