It’s so hard for me to evaluate this dress separately from her hair, because I’m so taken aback by the thick fringe and dark dye job. Shailene has always seemed like such a… beachy, freewheeling kind of person. There’s a reason we sometimes call her Mama Shai; she seems like someone who would retire to a beach community and buy a big house that’s not too freshly renovated, and rent space to wayward juveniles for like a dollar a month, while also teaching them to make windchimes. So that structured hair doesn’t gel for me at all, and I think it’s overwhelming her. It’s not Mama Shai, but Mistress Shai, or Madam Shai, master of the disciplinary arts.
Then again, maybe it’s less the hair itself than the coif in combination with the the high-necked top, and general meh factor of the dress itself. It’s making her boobs look ten miles south of where I think they actually are, and from some angles one of the portholes is giving us underboob. Oh, and don’t forget the little peplum. It’s a lot. Do we think this might have been cuter if the front was actually the BACK, perhaps? Or if it was in less of a tepid color? She’s wearing the hue nicely enough, but there’s an inherent drabness to it that might’ve been offset by some brightness. Let’s treat this as a rough draft and do a little copy-editing, shall we?
