It is funny how we come to define ourselves and our tastes a certain way and as a consequence, stop even trying anything different. There are people who don’t do colour and people who don’t wear trousers and people who refuse to put on heels. Or flats. And I get it, it’s the celebrated ‘personal style’ we are all supposed to exhibit and it makes sense to have broad rules, so we don’t need to dress from scratch every single day, to go through the full process of defining ourselves through style over and over. It is exhausting and unnecessary.

Why I keep encouraging people – possibly to an unreasonable extent – to try new, different things is that getting too stuck is no fun either. If you wear jeans and blazers because you adore them, fantastic. If you wear them because you tell yourself that you’re a jeans and blazer kind of a girl – well, that may be. But maybe you are also something else.

For years, I was suspicious of big dresses. I loved dressing up, but I thought I was all about long sinuous gowns, elegant and slinky and simple of cut. Frankly, I thought those poufy and ruffly creations were rather vulgar and didn’t even consider trying them on. Until I found this dress and never looked back.

I was ahead of the curve with my sudden affection for the ‘haystacks’ (as they are called in Estonian): in recent seasons, big, seriously voluminous dresses have been everywhere. I remember when Molly Goddard first came out with her subversively feminine tulle creations, long before the world-famous Villanelle dress. This spring, Tomo Kuizumi completely stole the show at the New York Fashion Week. Valentino has been doing amazing versions of BDs for a while, Marc Jacobs has got in on it and Giambattista Valli suddenly looks fresh and interesting, not boringly princessy. Rihanna and Lady Gaga both have had a role to play in this shift and master classes in BDE were recently delivered by Billy Porter and Gemma Chan at the Oscars.

To me, these big dresses no longer seem twee, they seem almost radical. The attitude has changed, it’s less about being pretty and more about being unapologetic, about taking up space, about being impossible to ignore. The dresses are still beautiful, in a way that is undeniable, almost like a force of nature: masses of gorgeous fabrics in gorgeous, unexpected colours. They are feminine, but often in an exaggerated way, reminding me of the hyperfemininity of drag queens. Feathers, ruffles, pinks are all very much part of the BDE* lexicon, as are inflated shapes and bold, even weird colour combinations.

What people who don’t wear these dresses often don’t realise is that there is a freedom to them that those elegant columns I tend(ed) to prefer lack. You can move, take long strides, have pockets, kick your shoes off. Your figure is not on a merciless display in the way it is, say, in a satin slip dress. I love seeing bigger women in big dresses, like Melissa McCarthy in Marc Jacobs. Michelle Obama in THOSE boots and the yellow dress rocked the same vibe, even if the dress wasn’t literally that big.

I’m wearing two dresses by Riina Põldroos in these pictures. Both are about volume, colour and boldness rather than traditional sexiness or minimal elegance. I find them extremely easy to wear, considering these are ginormous dresses in bright colours that make quite a statement. The yellow ensemble is technically a two-piece, consisting of a corset and skirt – you can wear them separately in a more casual way.

*Big Dress Energy is a play on Big Dick Energy. It’s OK to google.

Clothes by Riina Põldroos (the yellow is mine, the blue borrowed for the shoot), makeup by Grete Madisson, hair by Natallia at Helen Heinroos Hair, images by Krõõt Tarkmeel.