J.Crew: Convertible Swing Dress Review

This is J.Crew's Convertible Swing Dress (item #14724), which retails for $78.  It is alpha-sized, and is available in black, navy, tropical aqua, tropical palm, and weathered stone.  J.Crew describes the dress as such:

What's more fun for sun than a convertible? We designed this little number in a supersoft, swingy knit you can wear with the top up or down—as a midlength strapless dress, a short strapless dress, a swing top or a skirt. Strapless silhouette. Pullover. Foldover bodice. Empire waist. Full sweep skirt. As a dress—falls just above the knee. As a skirt—hits at midcalf. Import. Machine wash. Catalog/jcrew.com only.

I ordered this in a size small in the tropical palm color.  I also own two outlet versions of this dress, also in a size small, in black and dark grey.  The outlet dresses are the Sanur dress (which, according to a tag attached, so is this one), and do not include the pleated rows at the bottom hem, and in my opinion, the fabric is a slightly heavier.  Because the Convertible dress is a bit lighter, I think it flows a bit better.

There are multiple ways to wear this dress.  KatyO at The Violet Diary did a nice review of several different ways to wear this dress here.  I like to wear this dress as a cross between the long dress and short dress - the same as the fourth model picture shown above - where you fold the top part down to the waist, which creates an empire waist/babydoll look.  I like this look the best because it gives you double coverage (in a sense) on top, and it still falls to above my knees, but is not too short.

I think the dress fits very true-to-size.  The dress has a lot of stretch it, especially in the top.  The fabric is really nice - a soft but stretchy jersey, that moves and breathes well.  I think this dress could be dressed up with the right accessories, and of course works as a fun, casual dress.

One note about the color, which Shannon over at Wardrobe Review also mentioned: the tropical aqua color is not as saturated or as deep as it appears in the pictures online.  It is still a nice shade of aqua, but is slightly different than how it shows up online.

I kept this dress.  I love the pleats at the bottom, as well as the color.  I think it is a really fun color and dress for summer.

What do you think?  Do you like this dress?  Do you prefer this dress or the one without pleats?  Which colors do you like?  How would you wear it?