India, Aug. 27 -- Last night, when Taylor Swift announced her engagement to Travis Kelce, the internet predictably lost its collective mind. But what truly seized my attention wasn't the 8-carat sparkler by Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry; it was her sartorial choice: a striped Ralph Lauren dress. A silhouette at once classic and cinematic, yet equally mundane - perhaps deliberately so, to let that ring do all the talking.

Naturally, as a woman of impeccable taste and approximately zero chill, my first instinct was to dive headfirst into a deep, somewhat existential search for stripes. But not just any stripes: vertical stripes, to be exact. You see, vertical stripes are often underrated in the fashion hierarchy: dismissed as casu...