The (Disappointing) Maritime Dress And The Swimsuit That Didn't Swim With Me

OK, so if you can bear the suspence a little bit longer, I will let you know what I wore to the event yesterday night in my next post. The reason is that besides the final outfit, I want to show you what we won (so to speak, as we paid for it but we were the highest bidders) and I don't have it in my hands yet. Hint: it is going to be my Valentine's Day gift.

In the meanwhile I have for you the highly anticipated review of the Maritime dress, that I have received while I was on vacation. I ordered it as a ride-along because I was very curious to see it IRL. Well, it was a little bit disappointing I must say, in that it is kind of huge in my regular size XS. I didn't size down to a XXS because from my past experience I think I am more of a real XS than a XXS (I have some boobs), but in this case I should have, it is just too big in the body:



I could re-order it in the XXS (I don't think that it would be too short on me, even if I like where the XS hits) but there is another problem. The fabric is a very substantial cotton, almost the weight of sweatshirt, and it has long sleeves but the dress is meant to be worn barelegs (unless you want to wear it as a tunic, but I don't think it's worth the price in this case) which means that you are going to sweat in it (or be warm on the top and freeze your legs off). So I am going to return it because I honestly think that I would get very little wear out of it here in NY. I have accumulated so many clothes that this year I am going to try to buy only clothes that I love unconditionally AND are suited to my lifestyle (including the weather conditions of the place where I live), especially if I pay fp.
It is a real bummer because I have the perfect shoes for this dress, a pair of wedges by Corso Como that I had bought two years ago on clearance at Lohemann's and are almost the same shade of blue:



As you can see in the pic above and as other bloggers said, it is a little bit shapeless, so I belted it. I also have the perfect belt for it (an old JCrew braided one), but unfortunately it isn't going to save it:



Personally, I don't mind the zippers on the side (they are not very apparent), they are not a dealbreaker for me (even if I think that snap buttons would have been a better choice) but I was a little bit suprised by the choice of the contrasting color for the fabric (black or dark navy, I honestly can't tell). Here is a close-up (I don't think that you can see them very well on the website):



So I told you at the beginning that I ordered this dress as a ride-along. In reality the item in my order that was more important to me at that time was the Renatta swimsuit that I had ordered at the last minute for my vacation. For the first time ever, I had my order overnight shipped so that the swimsuit would be here in time. But the package was delayed by UPS, under the lame excuse of bad weather conditions (that weren't bad at all that day). I was beyond bummed when I realized that they weren't going to ship it but there was nothing that I could do (besides complaining to JCrew. After all they chose crappy UPS as their carrier) and the then useless swimsuit was waiting for me at home, along with the dress, when I got back.
Now, I had decided that I would return it on the priciple, since it will be at least 6 months before I wear a swimsuit again, but I am totally smitten. It is really beautiful and flattering and on top of if the price was great with the 40% off. Plus, I have a wedding this summer in fancy St. Marteen (hopefully we will also make a stop in St. Barths) and this is going to be perfect.

Because I couldn't wear it on vacation and the next vacation is far away, I decided that I will wear it on the blog and offer some sizing advice in case some of you are going to shop for swimwear. Don't worry, it is a one-piece and I am going to cover my bottom with beach pants so it isn't more revealing than a strapless dress.
First of all, I usually wear a S in bikinis (Jcrew and in general) but this kind of tanks are numerically sized and I had no idea what size to order. I knew that I wasn't a 0 but I could easily be a 2, 4 or even 6. I have more or less given up on ordering based on the measurements provided by CS so I didn't even bothered calling them. Luckily I had recently tried a 2 in store in another style and found it to be snug (I could squeeze in but basically couldn't breath) so I went with a 4 and kept my fingers crossed. Well, apparently I am a 4 as it fits me perfectly, who knew? So if you are a S I wouldn't go smaller than a 4. This is on me:



The other advise that I feel like giving is that the colors of the prints are much more vibrant IRL than they appear on the website (for some reason they look consistently faded on the website). Not that this is disappointing but I find that they are always very different from what I expect them to be. This is a close-up of the print of the Renatta:



Do you like/own the Maritime dress? What do you think of Jcrew swimsuits? Do you have any sizing advise?