EVERY SO OFTEN, a dress comes to define a time. The ‘Nap Dress’, as it was beguilingly named, first appeared on the website of Hill House Home – the direct-to-consumer brand founded by American designer Nell Diamond – in mid-2019. Diamond could not have known the resonance her dress would invite, at first from the upper-middle-class women of America, nor its subsequent global reach. 

The dress is simple and unassuming: it’s made from a soft smocked cotton and hits mid-calf. It looks like it would swing softly in a breeze, or on a gentle leap through meadows of wildflowers. It’s shirred at the bodice and falls neatly from the bust in a foggier version of the typically Austen-esque empire line, leaving the torso and lower body free from any restrictions or hints of shapeliness. It carries the whiff of a holiday in its summery prints and girlish shoulder ruffles (the brand itself was named after the Diamond family’s holiday home in Nantucket).