Big dress energy: why bigger is better for every occasion

‘I’ve arrived’ frocks are huge on the catwalks — quite literally — but is there more to them than frou-frou and fancy, asks Laura Craik 
MONCLER BY PIERPAOLO PICCIOLI AW19
Laura Craik12 September 2019

To be sure, it was a dumb dress to wear to the dentist.

I should probably have worn sweatpants. But I don’t think I’m the only woman who, when faced with a stressful event — root canal, smear test, 12-week scan — has offset her worry by foolishly, wantonly overdressing. It’s why I was lying on the dentist’s chair in a sky blue vintage dress, full-tiered skirt fanned out like a peacock, with a needle in my gum.

‘That was a dramatic sweep,’ said the dentist, as several metres of fabric tumbled from the chair when I made my exit. ‘Thank you,’ I said. Then I curtseyed. Why TF did I curtsey? Maybe I was high on novocaine. Maybe it was the effect of the dress. Whatever: for a moment I was Elizabeth Bennet and my dentist was Mr Darcy. If Mr Darcy was a bald sexagenarian with a penchant for sarcastic jokes.

Molly Goddard

Big Dress Energy is one of autumn’s biggest trends, literally. While the new autumn season is replete with many compelling trends, from androgynous tailoring to daytime disco to librarian chic, they don’t feel nearly as exciting as this one. Why dress as Diane Keaton in Annie Hall when you could swan around as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind instead?

‘So many designers showed a couture level of detail on styles that seemed to draw references from fairy tales, with lots of intricate embroidery and voluminous tulle dresses,’ notes Natalie Kingham, fashion buying director at Matchesfashion.com. ‘Highlights from the runway were Molly Goddard’s layered dresses and Simone Rocha’s dark florals. Cecilie Bahnsen’s dresses are one of my favourite ways to wear this look, which I pair with a heavy combat boot for a more modern, effortless silhouette.’

Roksanda

Trend-watchers will be unsurprised by the proliferation of Big Dress Energy this autumn. In many ways, it’s a continuation of summer’s love affair with sweeping, romantic maxi dresses. Witness the popularity of labels such as Ghost, And/Or, Sleeper and Reformation, which collectively spawned so many high-street copies that by June, rare was the London woman not gathering up her skirts in dramatic fashion before stepping daintily on to the Tube. Failing to ‘mind the gap’ has never had such dire consequences than when wearing billowing hems.

And boy, are autumn’s hems, skirts and even sleeves billowing. Voluminous satin gowns in searingly bright hues at Marc Jacobs; long, sweeping frocks with commensurately bombastic sleeves at Roksanda (both designers favoured daffodil yellow); tiers of faded rose pink organza at Rochas; full, quilted skirts at Oscar de la Renta; ankle-length crinolines in satin and sequins at Simone Rocha… the list goes on. These designers are not even working at the most exaggerated end of the spectrum. For that we must surely turn (carefully, if we happen to be near any naked flames) to Molly Goddard, the designer who has done as much for Big Dress Energy as Jodie Comer has for sexy female psychopaths.

TOMO KOIZUMI AW19

It was Goddard who so memorably dressed Comer’s character, Villanelle, in a baby-pink tulle evening gown in season one of Killing Eve, as she went about her business — killing people — in gay Paree. For autumn, Goddard has reprised the dress in fuchsia, lemon and mint green, expanding its proportions even further. Of all the fashionable looks that Villanelle wore throughout the two seasons of the much-loved show, it was That Dress that most lingers in the memory, ostensibly because it so played against type. Er, don’t all murderers wear black? The chutzpah of an undercover assassin choosing such an attention-drawing dress. The balls of her!

“Big dresses speak of a refusal to blend in: a desire to stand up and be counted”

Laura Craik 

Chutzpah is precisely what underpins the ramped-up, vamped-up XXL creations of autumn: you need a good dose of it to wear them. Unlike the wafty maxi dresses of summer, there’s an extremity to them, an air of defiance that feels refreshingly subversive. Big dresses speak of a refusal to blend in: a desire to stand up and be counted.

In fact, you could call them the ultimate in womanspreading. Even in 2019, a supposed age of equality, women are still ‘expected’ to sit a certain way: witness the furore when the Duchess of Sussex had the temerity to cross her legs at the knee, instead of at the ankle in keeping with royal protocol. The movement against ‘sitting nicely’ has been gathering force all summer, with models Bella Hadid, Chrissy Teigen and Emily Ratajkowski among those posting pics on Instagram of themselves spreading out and taking up as much space as they see fit. After years of manspreading, could this be women’s riposte? Even if they’re not being worn intentionally to hog space, these big, bold dresses make it impossible to ignore the wearer. They are not for wallflowers; they say, ‘I’ve arrived.’

MARY KATRANTZOU AW19

Ida Petersson, buying director at Browns, thinks the move towards statement dresses is in response to the streetwear and athleisure trends that have dominated fashion for the past few seasons. ‘It’s a return to women dressing for themselves, embracing femininity in all its guises, falling back in love with the drama and fantasy of couture and craftsmanship.’

If big dresses are about escapism, they can also act as a sort of glamorous armour. I somehow felt less worried about the dentist in my vintage dress, like a superhero in chiffon, with my skirt as a sort of protective cape. Obviously, dresses are feminine, but autumn’s XXL dresses are hyperfeminine, their exaggerated proportions and eye-popping colours owing a debt to the amplified femininity of drag queens. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the designs of rising star Tomo Koizumi, a costume designer whose work was discovered on Instagram by stylist Katie Grand and which led her to put on a show for him at New York Fashion Week. Inspired by the cult performance artist Leigh Bowery, the multi-coloured, multi-layered creations are like rarefied, couture versions of the subversive costumes he would wear at London clubs such as Blitz in the 1980s.

A similar mood came courtesy of Lady Gaga’s Brandon Maxwell gown at this year’s Met Ball, and Billy Porter’s Christian Siriano tuxedo gown at the Oscars. For why should BDE belong solely to women? Whoever you are, this season, it’s a case of go big or go home.

Click here to browse our edit of the top 50 big dresses of the season

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