One of my most looked-forward to events of New York fashion week is the Charles Nolan show, which happened yesterday. He uses a combination of models and “real people” (read: people who only look like models) and while my socks are rarely rocked by his nice-but-safe American Sportswear, I’m always pleased to see how much of his collection is wearable for bigger girls.

The show was mostly your usual, pretty-but-not-exciting homage to 1920′s Hamptons society and when I saw this anachronistic but still quite lovely dress on Olympian Dara Torres it reminded me that every big girl should have a dress like this in her closet. Dara Is a big girl and pretty much straight up and down and she looks fantastic. I have a similar dress available from Saks and I can attest that it looks just as good on pears as it does on apples.

Mysteriously, there was a third dress just like this available at the Avenue by a Marina Rinaldi flanker label, but it doesn’t seem to be on the site. Still if you love this dress and don’t want to pay for the Tadaschi, it might be worthwhile giving them a call.