How to wear a kaftan to work

The mistake is treating a kaftan as a dress and adding structure back in: a belt, a fitted jacket, a heel that fights the hem. The garment already has a shape. Belting it just tells everyone you did not trust it.

What works is a flat sandal or a low block heel, one long vertical line of jewellery rather than a cluster, and a bag that is small enough not to compete. If you want a layer, use something with no shoulder structure at all, an open drape or a soft quilted jacket that stops at the hip.

For an office with a dress code, the Sana in crimson over a tapered salwar reads as a tunic from the front. The stepped hem does the rest. Nobody in the room will call it a kaftan and you will be the only person there who is comfortable at four in the afternoon.

In heat, the open-weave linen is doing real work: it moves air rather than trapping it. A closer-cut dress in the same fibre will always be hotter. Volume is a cooling strategy, which is how the garment got its shape in the first place.