Whenever I have gone looking for dresses to wear in the daytime in the last year or two, I have found myself choosing between two opposing armfuls.

Piled over the left arm: the daytime TV presenter dress. This is pretty much skintight, but makes itself businesslike by being made of suit-tailoring wool or felted cotton and having sharp angles at the shoulder or an asymmetric hem. In its unadulterated form, it is in a plain, bright colour (best under the cameras), but is also available in monochrome. It claims to be a direct descendent of Roland Mouret’s Galaxy, although this provenance is hazy. It can be sexy in an Ivanka Trump Does Date Night kind of way. Sort of high-class bad taste.

In the opposing pile, the modern floral frock. This is a dress for Instagram, rather than daytime TV. It is long and loose, probably with a floral print on a dark background, and constructed in tiers that get wider towards the bottom, like a Fab lolly. It may bare the shoulders, but conceals your legs and arms. It probably has shoelacey bits which you tie at the neck or wrist or both. It is more me-time than date night. More free-spirited than power dressing. It is basically a nightie you are allowed to wear in the daytime.

But next time I go shopping, I reckon things will be different. A compromise is emerging. The newest shape to hit the catwalks for spring will be in all the shops soon, mark my words, and it looks something like the dress I’m wearing here. The silhouette is fit-and-flare. Some elements are taken from the first genre of dress: crucially, the shape acknowledges the fact that you’re a flesh-and-blood human being rather than an airy wood nymph. But in other ways, the mood is more similar to the second style of dress. The shape at the top is soft and unshowy, without darting or upholstering, which makes it feel relaxed and unarmoured.

This is a dress, then, which you can take in either direction. Go a bit more dressy and add sparkle or an elbow-length sleeve and you’ve got a date-night dress, although hopefully without the Ivanka angle. Make it floral and take it up a size, and you’ve got this summer’s picnic-selfie frock. (The stripe is somewhere in the middle.) Wear it with a heel to stride in one direction, trainers to step out in the other. Choose from a double-breasted blazer as a cover-up, or shoulder-robe a denim jacket. This dress comes in guises to cover all bases. Sometimes a compromise is the best of both worlds.

• Jess wears dress, £79, warehouse.co.uk. Boots, £115, dune.co.uk

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Samantha Cooper at Carol Hayes Management.