It's All in the Print

Mara Hoffman prints found here.

A print is so important to the appearance of the quality and price of your clothing. To me, the quality of the fabric often is not an issue when I'm shopping for clothes, it's the quality and appeal of the print that makes all the difference. Prints that look like they came out of the sale bin at Kohl's or TJ Maxx drive me nuts. Now, I am not saying that you can't find a beautiful print at Kohl's because you can and there are lots of designer prints that I hate and look cheap. For this post, I am going to focus on dresses. Here are some examples of my opinion of cheap looking dress prints:

from Kohl's

from Target

from Kohl's

Besides the poor shapes of these dresses, in my opinion the prints are cheap and tacky. I especially hate the technique they used on the first dress of using folds to create the white gaps in the print. On the other hand, a good print is one that looks like it took time to create. A print is a piece of art in its self and there are specific employees at clothing companies whose jobs are to make beautiful prints. Examples of these are below:

A Mara Hoffman dress from Bona Drag. Mara Hoffman's designs are the perfect examples of expensive prints; they are to die for. Here is a closer look of this print:

And a gorgeous print on a Mara Hoffman one-piece (not a dress, I know) found here. 

A Shakuhachi dress from Free People. 

A Valentino dress from net-a-porter.

A Michael Kors dress, also from net-a-porter.

Now you may be thinking, "but you didn't show any affordable dresses with expensive looking prints!" Don't worry, I'm getting there:

The print on this Minkpink dress from Nasty Gal reminds me a lot of Mara Hoffman's, but at a much more affordable cost.

The Blooms Day Dress from Nasty Gal is reminiscent of the Valentino dress, but in a different color scheme.

I love this Pieced Mesh Dress by Tallow in mali palms print from Free People. The pattern is so light and delicate.

Also not a dress, but I love the blue toned geometric print on this Sabo Skirt romper. 

I hope you enjoyed this post about prints. Again, this is just my opinion and prints that I like or don't like will definitely not be equal to everyone's tastes. I hope you learned a little more about my style from this post too!

oxxo Leo.