I spend a lot of time every day looking through page after page of dresses, constantly searching for the newest ones with the most potential for viral success. And after scrolling past one too many of the same dress styles we’ve been seeing season after season, I noticed something: All of the ones I was saving looked almost identical. Specifically, they all featured a drop waist, most often accompanied with a V-shaped, corset-like silhouette. Ears perked, I began to do some digging.

From what I could gather, the almost princess-like dress trend first came about (for 2022, that is) in Khaite’s resort ’22 collection in the form of sleek, low-waisted black gowns with full skirts and elevated long-sleeve dresses with cutouts and bubble hems. A few weeks after the collection dropped in June, Kendall Jenner announced her latest edit for FWRD on Instagram while wearing a simpler, more wearable version of Khaite’s drop waist dresses, which featured thin, tank-top straps and a V-shaped waist. Later in the summer, a similar style of dress from Abercrombie went viral on TikTok, leading to a sell-out of epic proportions. 

As a result, look-a-like dresses are now practically ubiquitous, as proven by my most recent virtual shopping trip. So, to mark the moment, I went ahead and rounded up all of the chicest drop waist dresses on the market. Shop them all below.