MY SIGNATURE DRESS

A good few years ago now, I was getting dressed to go out to dinner, and I had 'nothing to wear'.  So I started playing around with what I had in the wardrobe, and took out a long semi-circular wrapover skirt that I hadn't worn in a while.  The urge took me to pull the skirt up under my arms, twist the waist ties together and pull them around behind my neck.  I looked in the mirror and gaped ... behold a fabulous dress!  That was the dinner outfit and the next day production started,  A skirt that doubles as a dress, and visa versa.   This is that very "skirt":

In Lagrasse by the river, with the old footbridge in the background

There's nothing I like more than a garment that can be worn more than one way (and that will be the subject for another post).  I refined the cut and made the design up in lots of variations and it was a winner from the start. Its bias cut flatters almost every shape, is multi-size, so allows for those holiday waistline variations, and is about as feminine and flattering as you can get.  Yet again, simplicity is the key.  Here are two versions:

Fronza photographed in the full length version, in the Monk's Dormitory at the Lagrasse Abbey

Joëlle wearing it as a dress, then a skirt,  from the SS11 photoshoot

When I asked Kate McLean, my graphic designer, to design a logo for my business, this was literally her first proposition, and it's stayed ever since.

The great thing about this garment is that there are so many ways of wearing it.  Here are some photos of Laure, one of my lovely clients, who has that je-ne-sais-quoi when it comes to wearing clothes.  She dived into the shop a couple of summers ago, grabbed this dress off the hanger, disappeared into the changing room, reappeared a minute later with it tied like this, and hung around long enough for me to take a few shots.  And she walked out of the door wearing it, the ultimate compliment to the designer.

As a wedding dress:

 Some colour variations:

This dress is so popular, so classically beautiful and so much part of me that I'm not ready to push it out of my collection any time soon.