Style Friends: The Wrap Dresses

The wrap dress is one of the most wonderful inventions in modern fashion and women all over the planet should really worship this figure-flattering, versatile wonder of style and beauty - no joke on this one. Tall and slender or petite, plus-sized or just a little on the hefty side, the wrap dress fits every figure in just the right way. It skims the hips, accentuates the cleavage, elongates your legs and can be worn with anything from fishnet tights and high heels to skinny jeans or simply a pair of flip flops and a chunky wooden necklace for a day at the beach. The fact is, any modern woman should have at least a couple of such dresses - if not more - stored safely away in her wardrobe and used wisely, for maximum of impact.

The wrap dress made its way into the lives of fashionable women in the 1970s, thanks to legendary style guru Diane von Furstenberg, and ever since that happy moment the wrap was restyled, reworked and reinvented countless times and in a million colors and cuts, every time proving its versatility. Furstenberg turned the wrap dress into a veritable style revolution by encouraging ladies to "feel like a woman, wear a dress". The dress was an instant hit with women because, as mentioned before, it was very feminine and still retained an uncanny ability to cover up precisely those areas that a lady might not always want to put on display, hiding what needed to stay hidden and highlighting the best parts of our silhouettes.

If you're shapelier and have an hour-glass figure, the cross-over wrap dress will put emphasis on your waist and make your hips seem smaller and narrower. If you have a rectangular or straight figure - that is, with little difference between the hips and waist - the tied waist closure of the wrap dress will add more shape to your body and give you a distinctly feminine air. You can find wrap-around dresses in almost all sizes, shapes, colors and textures, and you can pair them up with virtually anything. If the weather is chilly, wear a wrap dress over your favorite pair of boot-leg jeans. If it's hot and sunny, head for the beach wearing such a dress over your swimsuit, or make the most of its color on a smart evening out with friends, wearing fishnets, stilettos and stunning earrings. So, what are you waiting for - head for the shops and see what you can find.