Washable Workwear Wednesday: Cornelia Ottoman Dress
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This was my first Boden purchase years ago and I still love it!
The brand’s well-reviewed Cornelia Ottoman Dress is made from a subtly textured ottoman jersey. Its classic shift silhouette makes it easy to wear everywhere and with anything: Add a suit jacket for more formal settings or slip on your favorite cozy cardigan for more relaxed ones.
This dress is $99 full price — on sale for $74.25 today — and comes in eight colors. It is available in sizes 0 to 20/22 as well as petite and long.
Looking for other washable workwear? See all of our recent recommendations for washable clothes for work, or check out our roundup of the best brands for washable workwear.
Sales of note for 9/23/25
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – 30% off tops and sweaters
- Banana Republic Factory – 40% off everything + extra 15% off
- Eloquii – 50% off select styles with code
- J.Crew – Extra 30% off sale styles, plus up to 50% off layers they love
- J.Crew Factory – 40-70% off everything + extra 60% off clearance
- M.M.LaFleur – Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Nordstrom – Fall savings event! Also get 15% off select beauty items and 6x points on beauty.
- Talbots – Anniversary event! 25% off entire purchase, plus fresh fall classics from $34.50
I love my husband but he does basically nothing to help me around the house because he is essentially blind to things that need doing / has ADD. I have accepted this as something that is realistically not going to change and is just something about my setup that sucks. But man its so frustrating sometimes to feel like I’m literally constantly either working or cooking or cleaning.
For those of you who have independent readers, how much time do they spend reading every day? My second grader has finally gotten into reading but I’m not sure she’s spending enough time on it because she’s a busy kid with activities, aftercare and homework (just spelling lists but spelling doesn’t come easily to her so we spend a significant amount of time working on it) and she also loves having downtime for unstructured play alone and with friends. I read aloud for 15-20 minutes at bedtime and I’ve been trying to move bedtime up a smidge so she can do 15 minutes of independent reading as well, but it doesn’t always happen. I don’t really want to cut out the read aloud time because we both enjoy it so much. She doesn’t get carsick and reads whenever we’re in the car but except for a long drive once a week to an activity, we don’t spend very much time in the car. Weekends in October were absolutely jam-packed with Halloween parties and events, I’m hoping the next couple of weekends will be calmer and we can have some time for reading, but it’s a real struggle on weeknights. Just curious what other people do.
How do you and your spouse communicate about who is on kid duty when you’re both just chilling at home? DH has this annoying habit of doing something to piss off the baby then leaving me to deal with it.
Example: he’s playing with baby, I’m reading on the couch in the same room, he puts the baby in tummy time then goes to take a shower without saying anything to me, then baby starts screaming. I talked to DH about it, but he didn’t think it was a problem because I should just let the baby cry. No, don’t leave me 1) to figure out you’re not around (our house has a choppy floor plan, you could be in a different room but 5 feet away), and 2) to soothe the baby from crying longer than he would have been if I’d known I was supposed to be monitoring tummy time.
I see this issue only becoming more important when baby is mobile. How do most people do this? And how to get a resistant spouse to actually tell you when they’re off doing whatever? I don’t want to have to physically leave the room every time I want to relax with a book for a few minutes while DH watches baby.
Feeling down on myself recently, have a rant that may out may not be relatable.
I’m feeling like having a baby has just made me stupid and maybe it’s not recoverable. With the sleep deprivation, the hormones, all the additional home stuff to manag that comes with kids, getting stale at work, I feel like I’m not capable of picking up and synthesizing new information like I did 3 years ago. I used to be so curious and good at learning, but now it’s a struggle to focus on any new topics. I’m a software dev and I’ve been trying to upskill at work and I feel like I just can’t do it and I might as well just give up having a career in this market and go start a daycare or something since that’s all I’m good at now. Anyone else felt that way, commiseration or advice on getting out of it?
at what age does it become inappropriate for girls to wear leggings with shirts that don’t cover their tush?
when do birthday parties start transitioning to hangouts with cake and no presents? I have memories of like, getting together in a basement for a friend’s bday and there would be pizza and cake and whatever, but it wasn’t a present-giving affair.
My kiddo is 12 and just got an invite to what I’m thinking is this sort of celebration. I don’t want to send her without a present, but am also a little stuck- it’s a “come celebrate Anna’s 12th birthday! We’ll have Chipotle and cake and get ready for the [school dance] together.” There are like 25 girls invited.
Can someone help me understand the rules about daycare FSAs for a high-income household where each individual salary is under the high-income threshold? I’m not sure if we can do 2500 or 5000 in total.
What’s your approach to helping your kids with homework? My Ker has “optional” homework, and since he can’t read, I obviously have to facilitate. I find myself slightly annoyed that the teacher has basically assigned me homework–she’s not my boss and didn’t ask about my schedule! I realize that’s a bit petulant and perhaps a bit naive about the parental involvement required to succeed in the American public school systems. Last weekend I watched my sister and parents spend about four hours helping my 4th grade nephew on a convoluted book report diorama, and oooh boy, I am dreading that. I graduated school, thanks, and I’m not interested in returning and spending my little free time with my kids checking off some rubric for creating a multi-colored dodecahedron.
Wow, that dress is SHORT on that model.
I was thinking about yesterday’s discussion, and something that didn’t come up was the use of computers for kids to go at their own pace. As much as I dislike so much learning (especially math) being on a computer, it does allow the lessons to be more tailored. I was talking with my oldest son and he remembers that in a younger grade, he was so far ahead on the math that he got into a section about decimals, which they hadn’t covered in class yet, so the teacher pulled him and two other kids aside to give them an overview on decimals so they could keep going.
Do you have this in your schools? Programs I know my kids have done are Symphony Math, Khan Academy, Epic… Again, I don’t love the screens aspect, and it brings its own downsides, but it does seem to address some of the issues we talked about yesterday.
I think where you are is important to note, too. We are in CT, which is often ranked 2 or 3 for education in the country, so even though we are at a Title 1 city school, my kids have access to a lot. (I’m also one of the people who mentioned the WIN program)
Is it acceptable to wear sweatpants nearly everywhere? I have a few pairs of athletic joggers that are tapered at the ankle and have zippered pockets, so I think they look sleeker than regular baggy sweatpants, but maybe I’m kidding myself. I mostly work from home so I practically live in them. I wear them to school dropoff and pickup, errands, kids’ activities…really the only time I don’t wear them is in the office and to a nice restaurant.
Do any boot/shoe brands have narrow calves? Zappos doesn’t include that as a search term and I don’t want to have to order a million boots to try them. My preference is to stay under $200 if possible.