Anna Cotton Dress, Blue Lotus

Block-printed cotton at its most romantic. The Anna is a proper hand-printed dress: a delicate blue lotus motif scattered across crisp white cotton, with a square neckline that sits beautifully on the collarbones, full balloon sleeves and a tiered skirt that swishes when you walk. The waist is fitted, the skirt is generous, and the whole effect is somewhere between a Provençal courtyard and an English garden tea.

There's no occasion this dress doesn't quietly answer for: wedding guest, holiday dinner, or the school run if you fancy it. The block print catches the light in a way machine prints simply can't, and once you've worn one hand-printed cotton dress, you'll start eyeing all the others.

The heritage behind it: Maison de Belle is a female-founded, female-owned brand that describes itself as “London Soul, Indian Craft”, and its story is a lovely one. It was born from a dream that refused to fade. Its founder grew up in Assam, captivated by the artistry of Indian textiles: the patience of the craftsman's hand, the rhythm of wooden blocks meeting cloth, and the quiet magic of patterns passed down through generations. Fashion called to her early, but it wasn't a path she was allowed to follow. So she tucked the dream away, carried it with her when she moved to the UK in her twenties, and years later finally answered it.

The craft: every piece is made using traditional hand block printing, with hand-carved wooden blocks, natural dyes and methods refined over generations. Maison de Belle works with small, family-run workshops whose artisans inherited the craft from their parents and grandparents. These aren't factories. They're homes, courtyards and small studios where printing is both livelihood and legacy. Many of these families are struggling to keep their art alive, because fast fashion doesn't need them. Maison de Belle does, and by working with them it's helping to preserve a craft at risk of disappearing, with fair wages for the makers and ethically sourced fabrics.

Small by design: the fabrics are deadstock, high-quality cloth that would otherwise end up in landfill, so only a few pieces of each design are ever made. When it sells out, it's gone. And because every block is pressed by hand, no two prints are ever perfectly identical. That's not a flaw. It's the signature of something made by people, not machines.