I still recall the particularly cringeworthy time I squeezed my angmoh ass in to a cheongsam only to find myself standing next to a willowy beauty at one Christmas party that is forever imprinted on my mind.

Although this may be an extreme example (I gave away the offending dress faster than if it had been on fire) I have often wondered how someone can wear the same dress as you, have roughly the same figure, yet look, well, better in it.Apart from moving to the other end of the room, I have discovered that there IS  something you can do.

Whilst what I’ve recently learnt couldn’t have rescued me from my cheongsam fiasco, on a normal day – when (hopefully) wearing normal clothes – it does seem to work:  we are talking about the deliciously retro but really rather fabulous possibilities of a slip/petticoat (did you think I was going to say exercise?!)

Aside from making you feel like setting your hair in rollers and doing your make up with a lit cigarette dangling from your lips, (evidence of one too many episodes of  Mad Men; see pic above) a slip really does take the cling out of dresses and offers results so good, I actually now hate not wearing one (yup, I’ve even been known to have a cami on under a T-shirt).

I can’t bear poly in this heat so I went for silk and tried relatively hard to find the least expensive pure silk slip I could.

On the basis that ‘inexpensive’ and ‘silk’ are rarely in the same sentence I’m not sure I succeeded, but several google searches produced Nara Silk who own their own silk factory in a place called Shantou in Canton, China, and whose prices are pretty good.

Their silk is actually quite heavy (there’s a bit on their website which explains what constitutes great silk and why, I can’t pretend to be any sort of an authority) and what I bought – pictured above – cost about the same as something stretchy and polyester from Marks & Spencer’s out here (UK readers, M&S Singapore is about triple what it costs in the UK, just to put that comment in context).

Don’t panic at their slightly questionable website, which has an air of ‘lost in translation’ to it all, just go to the first section under Women’s that says Slips & Babydolls. This is the one that I think is great (also what’s hanging up in the shot above) and just the right length for wearing under short dresses.

I ordered the wrong size in a panic it was going to be too small (it was too big) and they were brilliantly easy about a return and very fast to reissue me with the right size. A size ‘S European/American’ is about a UK 10 (they say on their chart it’s a UK 6-8 but I really don’t agree, which is why I didn’t order it initially).  A medium EU/AM as they call it is – I would say – a UK 12-14.  You can also order their things in Asian sizing (big love that they have differentiated between the Asian and European size gap).

I have no affiliation, whatsoever, with Nara Silk. I paid the regular price for my own slip.

Roller & lipstick lady is courtesy of Everything Beautiful