Tall Girl Treat: High Summer at Long Tall Sally

All of your baked goods are belong to us

I recently went along to Long Tall Sally's bloggers breakfast to have a peer at the high summer collection, chat to the women who fit, design and make the clothes, and maybe try a couple of things in the dress-up area. Long Tall Sally having gone through something of a purple patch recently - just LOOK at their Ruby Rocks collaboration. I mean, honestly. LOOK! - I inadvertently turned up wearing an LTS blazer and jeans, and spent the morning feeling like the class swot.

(Actually, a quick sidestep for the Ruby Rocks stuff which is great and I need to put my two favourites in your eyes:)

Zig zag dress, £55, sizes 8 to 18

Ruby Rocks batik tube dress, £45, sizes 8 to 16

(This tube dress inevitably looks rubbish on the page. On, it looks so ridiculously foxy I cannot even. Reader, I bought it. End of Ruby Rocks sidebar.)

I brought along Elizabeth, whose provenance as a Tall Sluttery +1 has already been honed at Upper Street; hunting non-awful maxi dresses and on sequinned jumper rampages in Topshop. Elizabeth is a particularly useful ally as she exists solely in skirts and dresses, and as such knows more about a flared fit than I thought possible.

Peer between the usual linen trousers and maxi dresses which are apparently LTS's bread and butter - seriously, who are all these women obsessed with linen? - and there are some incredibly good dresses, jackets and jumpsuits. Elizabeth tried on a sample of this rose print dress which looked amazing.

Green goddess! I featured the jersey dress on the right in my ladylike dressing post last month, but it's the summer floral scuba dress that I got the hots for. Elizabeth disapproves of scuba material, but I bought one from their spring season and it's a revelation. No ironing, looks a bajillion dollars, generally great.

This is Long Tall Sally's lovely new ambassador, the 6'3" GB high jumper Isobel Pooley. As well as being ridiculously clever and charming, she was also clearly in love with clothes and as such, really nice to talk to. None of that "being on-brand" rubbish that you can hear a mile off, just genuinely enthusiastic about her favourites. I loved this jumpsuit she was wearing with toecap courts.

Isobel tried on this jungle leaf print dress which looked ridiculously good: it's floaty, has a wonderful skirt and a cross-over gathered waist that hugs the waist like a Latino lover at a dance class for Spanish stereotypes. Am bloody devastated these aren't my colours: this is an absolute grade A summer dress.

Love these casual summer flats. Basically, it was ages until Elizabeth and I so much as lifted a yoghurt to our mouths because we just had a really nice time chatting. We were asked what we would like to see in the line, which is a nice change from some brands who just churn out any old thing. I gave my vote to black woollen cigarette pants. Fingers crossed eh?

• Red espadrilles (£26)
• Lace espadrilles (£26)
• Stripe bow ballerina (£36)
• Toecap snake ballerina (£40)

 

Prints! I really loved the hummingbirds on this bird print vest (£22), and the scarf print on this kaftan (£48) is incredibly striking. That blue would look amazing with a tan. *eyes St Tropez bottle*

And jeans. God how these have come on, even in the past year. A lot of colour, plenty of different styles and most importantly, waistlines that no longer finish someone around your chest.

 

A fire drill sent us out of the building, but meant that I got to walk past some pieces from the autumn collection.

"WANT!" said Elizabeth, pawing at the beige coat.
"YES!" I said, waving at the red check coat/blue crombie/fox jumper/air.

And just to get an idea of how fabulously tall Isobel is in heels, here she is standing with me - and I'm 6'1. Readers, we both felt amazing.