Thinking About... Maxi Dresses

Maxi dresses are one of those things that I've shopped for several times over the years without any success. I really like the idea of having one for summer, though, and I am adding it to my shopping list for the coming spring/summer season. 

My proportions (busty, top-heavy figure) make dress shopping generally difficult. With maxi dresses, my lack of height (5'3'', but shorter of leg and a touch longer of torso than average) adds another complicating factor. I've had so little luck so far that I'm not sure I actually expect to be successful in finding one this year either. I could potentially settle on a midi-length dress instead, perhaps. 

I feel extraordinarily picky, but over time and with considerable experience trying things on, there are a lot of common design details that are almost guaranteed not to work for me. My criteria are as follows:

• No drop-waist. Because of both my height and general body shape, they generally don't look good on me, particularly with a floor-length skirt.
• I'm also cautious about smocked or elasticized waists, even those meant to hit at the natural waist. The resulting blouse-y effect can lend to a slightly preposterous boob-tent look on me.
• Generally no ruffle details or other embellishments at the hem because that could make hemming (likely a necessity) more difficult. This doesn't seem like a big common issue with current-season items. 
• Because I would like to wear any maxi dress that I buy on trips to hot, humid places I'd prefer summer-friendly fabrics like cotton and maybe viscose or modal rather than polyester. 
• However, super-unstructured tee-shirt dress designs often don't work well on me either, which might make my fabric preferences more difficult to accommodate. 
• Strapless, halter top, and even some spaghetti straps and other necklines are not suitable because they won't work with my bras. Very open backs or overly deep v necks would have the same problem. 

I've actually spent a lot of time browsing the Loft, Gap, Old Navy, and J.Crew online stores and only the pictured dress seemed to have potential. The neckline is a bit open, but from reading reviews and because its Loft, I suspect that it wouldn't be too bad. I'll be waiting on the next flash sale. In the meantime, I might look to Ebay instead, and I am certainly fully prepared for the possibility of not finding anything suitable this year. Any recommendations that you might have would, of course, be welcome!

In other blog news, I recently installed Disqus because I noticed that Blogger's anti-spam mechanisms for comments didn't seem to cooperate with some browsers. I haven't quite figured out how to place the comment count text where it used to be, but am otherwise happy with Disqus so far. I also enabled the feature that allows non-Disqus registered users to comment by leaving a name/URL/email.