Urgent! Need a work dress for next week

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I'm speaking at an event (daytime) next week. It's a very male dominated industry and I want to look feminine. Looking online I'm finding that everything is very summer-y which doesn't feel quite right for March. I normally wear Mint Velvet or Whistles but I haven't bought anything new for ages. I really liked the look of the Hope & Ivy William Morris Society dresses but I've left it too late and they've sold out.

I'm based in London so I don't have to order online - could go in store to try on and collect as the timescale is quite tight.

Budget around the £150 mark.

Please help!

Plenty here:

https://www.meandem.com/sale/dresses-and-jumpsuits

You should be able to find out what sale stock is in any particular branch.

In these situations I'm straight to Hobbs. Not that edgy but good quality and reliable

Also, having looked at the Hope & Ivy dresses - they’re perfectly nice but I don’t think you need a flowery printed dress to convey the fact that you’re female. Maybe just looking authoritative is enough?

Do you normally do lots of public speaking in your job OP? If you do, then please ignore me, but something I find (my job sometimes involves it, sometimes not) is that you can get a bit sweatier than normal. So I would tend to go for darker colours (or the patterns you liked in the WM dresses would have done the same job) and get the femininity from the shape/cut of the dress. Whistles do have some likely looking dresses in their sale.

I wear a lot of Wallis and Dorothy Perkins dresses for work. This was my latest purchase - conservative and covered up but still floaty and feminine. www.wallis.co.uk/product/dorothy-perkins-navy-spot-shirred-cuff-midi-dress_bqq16692?colour=navy

Thank you! I don't need to look feminine, and I definitely don't want to look sexy(!) but I am literally the only woman who does my job and there's no point in hiding from it. I just liked the Hope & Ivy ones (plus could get some use out of it for an autumn wedding)

Thanks for the links - I'll take a look.

@BarnacleBeasley I do quite a lot of public speaking and yes - agree on the sweat!

I've found the quality is quite bad in the Whistles dresses I have. Admittedly they have now been worn to death but I've had to repair them so many times. I treated myself to some jeans a few months ago and one of the buttons popped off - it had been hammered in at an angle so the fixing was broken before I bought it. Just lost faith in them a bit

These dresses were linked on another thread. You might think they're a bit twee but I quite like some of them and they are definitely feminine!

https://palava.co/collections/womens-dresses

How about a Libby London shirt dress?