There is a specific white dress you picture when you picture Italy in summer. Long, easy, catching the light on a terrace somewhere, worn by a woman who looks like she has nowhere to be and all the time to get there. The good news is that dress does not cost what the picture suggests. The best of them, in fact, come in well under $100.
A white dress earns its place in an Italian summer because it does everything. It reads fresh in heat that ruins other colors. It goes to lunch and to dinner without changing. It photographs like a memory. The only real question is which shape, and that comes down to how you like to move.
For the everyday hero, choose a linen maxi. The Matilda is the one I'd pack first — sleeveless, floor-skimming, and completely undramatic, which is exactly the drama. It's the dress you wear to the market, to the long lunch, to the dinner you didn't plan, all in the same day. Linen creases; on this, the creases look expensive.
For evening, choose a little more drape. Something that moves when the room does, in the same white palette so it still packs with everything else. For the beach club, a dress you could throw over a swimsuit and walk straight from the water to the bar without a second thought.
The trick to a white dress in Italy is to keep the styling as quiet as the color. Flat sandals by day, a better sandal and gold earrings by night, a straw bag through all of it. Let the dress and the light do the work. That's the entire look.
You'll find the full range — linen maxis, resort styles, evening whites, most of them under $100 — in our White Linen Edit, European Summer, and Mediterranean Summer collections. One of them is the dress in your Italy picture. Probably the Matilda.
Shop the Matilda and the White Linen Edit at Forever Vogue.