How to wear a tunic dress with modifiations

How To Wear a Tunic Dress with Modifications

I appreciate each and every share. Thank you!

I always love it when we can wear the same clothing item and show you how it would look on different bodies that are a variety of ages.
That’s why I bought these matching tops and decided to showcase how to wear a tunic dress for each of us. We each used different modifications to make it work and wore it uniquely.

MSN readers should click here to see all of the photos and widgets.

Quote of the day: “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” Thomas Edison

This quote made me giggle because I feel like being the boss of your clothes includes having some great junk that you can use to help transform your pieces. In fact, I call this junk “Tools of the Trade” and have them listed in the tab here on my site. They are things that you may not need every day, but they can help out at certain times.

How to wear a tunic dress
1-Pair it with skinny jeans-Charlotte
2-Style it with straight-leg jeans-Lesley
3-Wear it over a dress-Jodie
4-Other options

Yet today with how to wear a tunic dress, most of our modifications are layering ideas although there is one sewing trick if you want more shaping to your tunic (see the idea in Lesley’s example).
I purchased these tunic dresses at my favorite local boutique, Just Be Youtiful, at the brick-and-mortar store. There is an online site also with a different selection of items (use code Jtouch15 for a discount).

But don’t forget my goal is to have you get creative with what you already have in your closet. Maybe you have a tunic like this? Then you can pull it out and play along.

Insider tip: The best way to make this piece more versatile? Stop calling it a tunic. It’s a beautiful print piece of material that can be worn in many ways. In fact, don’t forget you can tuck it into a skirt and call it a top.

Related post: Ideas to style a caftan

You should definitely sign up for the emails below. Besides the free eBook, my email family gets personal tidbits of what’s going on in my life along with other happenings, sales, information, giveaways, extra photos, and interesting articles.

How to Wear a Tunic Dress with Skinny Jeans

Layer a tunic dress over a turtleneck
Tunic Dress: no label from Just Be Youtiful ~~ Jeans: LOFT-thrifted ~~ Turtleneck: Macys~~ Shoes: Old Navy-thrifted ~~ Earrings: from her Egypt trip ~~ Purse: Lulus-thrifted

It seems natural to pair a tunic dress with skinny jeans because you have the flowy, voluminous aspect of the dress with a tighter fit of the jeans.
For a case like this, you could even substitute leggings or tights, both of which have that same tight silhouette around the leg.

Charlotte’s tunic dress is a turquoise color. If you look closely you can see how the waist is pulled in slightly, and there is a bow tie in the middle of the black and white design.
This tunic came with this tie that allows you to create a waist if you prefer.

And my mom paired the turquoise tunic dress with mustard skinny jeans. This color combination is so stunning. From far away you don’t notice that there is a gold color in the print of the tunic, but maybe you can see it up close.

Related post: Other options of colors to wear with mustard jeans

Not only is Charlotte wearing skinny jeans, but she also layered her tunic dress over a turtleneck. The turtleneck is a blue color that is the same colorway as the tunic but doesn’t match per se.

Accessories with a Print Tunic Dress

There are different shades of blue in this tunic dress so my mom used a couple of different blues in her overall look with other pieces besides the turtleneck.

A turquoise purse which is worn crossbody style blends in with the pattern. And blue shoes are a great pop of color for the feet.

The other fun detail is the earrings which have a Bollywood vibe that ties in with the print on the tunic.

Styling a tunic dress for women over 80

Styling a Tunic Dress with Straight Leg Jeans

Tunic: no label from Just Be Youtiful~~ Pants: Amanda GVB-thrifted ~~ Top: Chicos~~ Shoes: Bandolino- thrifted ~~Purse: no label-Cottage Garden Boutique

You can see how Lesley and Charlotte’s outfits are very similar yet with a couple of differences. Lesley’s tunic dress is a darker blue overall, she paired it with straight-leg jeans and she didn’t use the tie at the waist.

Even if the print didn’t have any yellow in it, the combination of blue and yellow together is always so striking. That’s a great reminder if you are looking for a pop of color with blue, try some yellow with it.
BTW, the print has gold in it, not yellow per se. This shows that you don’t have to match the colors exactly for color combinations to look great together.

The option of straight-leg jeans still works wonderfully with the tunic dress because the focus is still on the top half of the outfit.
Another interesting fact is that Lesley called this a kaftan when giving me her clothing information.

Insider tip: Don’t be swayed by the names and categories of our clothing. It doesn’t matter WHAT you call it, it’s all about how you WEAR it.

I love how Lesley didn’t use the tie at the waist for this example of how to wear a tunic dress. Just because your clothing has certain details, doesn’t mean you have to wear them that way. Remember, you are the boss of your clothes.

Insider tip: If you have a tunic that could use some shaping, you could easily either add a casing on the inside (the casing on this tunic was only in the front and back, not all the way around) or add some elastic in areas.

Gold and Yellow Together

Lesley also added yellow with her purse and a scarf she brought along in case the evening was chilly.
For her accessories, she opted for gold earrings and a bracelet that ties in with the print of the tunic.

The blue shoes bookend the blue of the tunic since they match the blue in the top.

For her layering, she opted for a white tank top, to fill in the cleavage area.

Beautiful tunic worn by grown women

Wear It Over a Dress

How to wear a tunic dress with layering
Tunic Dress: no label from Just Be Youtiful ~~White Dress: no label-thrifted from Horizon thrift~~Shoes: Walking Cradles ~~ Glasses: Glasses Shop use code GSHOT35~~ Purse: Maccessori c/o code Jodie15 on full priced items

I wanted to see what other ways there were how to wear a tunic dress. Of course, you can always wear it by itself, but this day was a little chilly and I felt I needed extra layers.
When I originally considered layering this over my white dress, I thought some of the dress would hang below it. I hadn’t realized how long the tunic dress really was. Either way, it would look great, yet in this example, you may not even realize the white piece is a dress (the proof is here).

For some tunic dresses, you may feel more comfortable with something underneath in case the wind comes up or you want extra modesty. For those times, another dress, skirt, or even shorts would be a wonderful option.

You can see the casing and bow tie at the waist better in these shots. Of course, if you didn’t want to use the DIY examples I explored in Lesley’s section, you could even try a thin belt on the outside if you’re looking for some shaping to a piece.

It’s one of the reasons, I like keeping the self-belts from other dresses with my belts because they are usually made of material and not as stiff. I also like the chain belts as an option.

More Print with Accessories

This purse happened to match the colors in the dress so perfectly. It’s from a company that specializes in tweed products and their items are just beautiful. They do ship to the US, and the purse is a great deal right now.
If you are looking at non-sale items, you can use the code Jodie15 for a discount.

I felt like the zebra heels were a sexy option for shoes and I even wore black and white earrings, as well as sparkly barrettes.

Insider tip: Just because you have short hair doesn’t mean you can’t wear hair accessories. Think of them as decoration instead of having to be functional. See other ways I’ve used hair accessories here.

Wearing a border print tunic for fall

More Ideas of How to Wear a Tunic Dress

I always love it when the three of us can wear the same clothing item and show how it looks on women of different ages and sizes. In fact, this tunic dress is a one-size-fits-most, and you can see how that looks on us.

We showed another example of styling the same tunic in the past. And I was even more creative in that example.

Related post: Unique way of styling tunics

So while we gave 3 different looks of how to wear a tunic dress, I would like to say there are even other options. This is no different than the ways we’ve showcased 4 different ways to wear a dress when traveling.
1-As in the post title above “Unique way of styling tunics”, you can tuck it into a skirt to make it a top.
2-Don’t forget you can also layer over it. If your tunic dress has sleeves that make wearing a jacket too hard, then don’t forget to try using a vest.
3-Experiment with a skirt (or dress) under the tunic dress that hangs out from underneath.
4-Layering over a flowy tunic like this isn’t impossible. Think about using your ponchos or making your scarf into a wrap.

When you have a gorgeous clothing item like this, it’s so beneficial to wear it in multiple ways!!

How to wear a tunic dress for older women
How to wear a tunic dress with modifications

Photo credit: Rob Filogomo

Thank you

If you’ve enjoyed this, I hope you will look around the site and…

  • find out more about the blog here. Including behind-the-scenes of our relationship here.
  • you can see all the categories of past posts here
  • feel free to use any discounts or deals that I share here.
  • make sure to sign up for emails to enjoy fun features in every email PLUS get my recent eBook here.
  • follow me on InstagramFacebookYouTube, and Pinterest.
  • and if you ever want to reach out or have any requests, feel free to email me at JTouchofStyle@gmail.com

If you enjoyed any of this information, I would appreciate it if you would share, share and share wherever you can!! You can do this by saving an image to your Pinterest board or sharing this post on Facebook. Or send this post to your friend, and make sure they sign up for the emails.

Welcome to Jodie’s Touch of Style. I’m here to prove that it’s never too late to look great. Clothing and style are meant to showcase your inner personality. So let’s have fun and try new things.

It’s not just about me on this blog, but also my mother and friend. We get to showcase not only different decades of life but also different body shapes and unique personal styles.

Find out more about all of us here. And make sure to join the email list where I include so much more.

Scroll to Top