The economics of the party-dress industry works like this: big brands pay good money to the right actresses and pop stars for wearing their clothes to the most glamorous events. Payment may take the form of a lucrative advertising contract, or an all-expenses-paid, private-jet-and-Paris-Ritz freebie, or a discreet five-figure bank transfer – but in some form, the transaction is monetised. The only "in" for a small designer hoping for A-list patronage is to create something so unique and one-of-a-kind that a star decides to wear it in order to secure style-leader status. So, here's a fashion brain-teaser for you: how does Preen, a small London fashion label without an advertising budget let alone a private-jet budget, manage to pull off Kate Moss, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cheryl Cole and Rihanna all squeezing into an almost identical dress?
By magic, that's how. Because that's what the Power dress is: old-fashioned magic. The dress a fairy godmother might conjure up for you if you had a hot date (and a fairy godmother). Created by British design duo Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi in their London studio, and perfected over the course of three years, the Power dress is the ultimate modern party dress: sexy, cool, understated. That it has become near-ubiquitous on the party pages while remaining unidentifiable to those not in the know is testament to its sleight of hand – this is a dress that trains the spotlight on its wearer, not itself. Oh, and there's one more thing: stretch elastane, a 1950s corsetting fabric, which forms the base layer of the Power dress. The fact that this dress takes around an inch off your waist and flattens your stomach surely doesn't hurt.
When the Power dress was born in September 2006, Preen was already a decade-old veteran of the British fashion scene. But this dress – short and sculptural, with a flatteringly fluid layer of satin draped over the steely inner elastane like the icing on a cupcake – was sexier, more va-va-voom, than what Preen had done before. The next day, the phone rang: Kate Moss wanted the dress.
"That seemed like a good sign," recall Thornton and Bregazzi, with typical understatement. Indeed. But buyers were less keen. Some boutiques that had previously stocked Preen even skipped their order that season. "They said, 'It's too tight. We can't sell it,'" remembers Thornton. But when the stock hit the shopfloor in early 2007, those buyers who had embraced the Power dress found they had a hit on their hands. Within a week, Selfridges and Net-A-Porter were both on the phone placing repeat orders. Amy Winehouse wore the dress in yellow, with a black bra, to the Brits, showing the Power dress at its most rock'n'roll; Gwyneth Paltrow wore it in black to the Iron Man premiere, "which made people realise it could be chic, too", says Thornton.
Thornton and Bregazzi have been together for 14 years, and working together for 13. In the tediously mannered fashion scene, where designers affect ever more ludicrous eccentricities in lieu of having anything interesting to say, they are brilliantly normal. When they are designing, says Bregazzi, "Justin will show me a sketch and I'll say, that's lovely, but where would you put your boobs?" They have a daughter, Fauve; not long ago, on Fauve's first birthday, they got engaged. For the first six months, they took Fauve to work every day – first in her moses basket, then in a playpen and highchair. It wasn't until the day she brought a high-level meeting in Selfridges boardroom to a standstill with her high-decibel raspberry-blowing that they hired a part-time nanny.
Their down-to-earth attitude has been key to their success. Where other young British designers are hampered by a too-cool-for-school attitude that drives them to reinvent themselves each season for fear of being labelled dull, Preen have felt the wind in their sails and held steady. As Melanie Rickey, Grazia's fashion editor at large, puts it, "what they've done, which a lot of designers fail to do, is realise when they're on to something, and stick with it". The Power dress has become a constant, although refined slightly with each season – sometimes with a peplum, sometimes with a bubble skirt, and now also in a longer "ripple" version that, says Thea, suits fuller body shapes.
Like the Roland Mouret Galaxy dress before it, the Power owes as much to what it suggests as what it reveals. As Rickey puts it, "it's as sexy as Herve Leger, but much subtler. It doesn't expose your anatomy in the way a bandage dress does. It somehow makes small boobs look bigger and big ones look smaller; it literally forms you into this incredible shape." Laura Larbalestier, designerwear buyer for Selfridges, pinpoints the Preen customer as the woman "who wants to go out and look good but not too girly. She wants a bit of attitude. It's a cool girl's way of looking sexy without looking like she's tried too hard."
Will the devil still be wearing Prada this New Year's Eve? We'll probably never know. Because even if he is, everyone will be looking at the girls in Preen.
Source : www.guardian.co.uk
