Oh no, this dress is the reason why dresses that cost ££££ are (usually) worth their weight in diamonds. Tom Ford knows female bodies pretty damn well, for with this piece he created fabric sculpting long before Hervé Léger rolled out his elastic band abominations. This one is made of two layers of black silk, has a silk lining (stitched to the dress itself, not hiked up underneath it), has a powerful back zipper and a long velvet ribbon that acts as the strap of a bra, for it allows its ample neckline to be open and lifted at the same time, with no need for any lingerie whatsoever. Its long fluted sleeves are a plus point as well, for they conceal one of my weak points, what I regard as my fat arms. See this one?
Those ruched cuffs are actually detachable. My dress doesn't have these but it is otherwise very like the one in this pic; the cuffs flare out above my hand and give me a properly long sleeve, something I always struggle to find, even though I don't regard myself as a woman with excessively long arms (and in case you're wondering, of course I don't look as GOOD as Carmen Kass does here, but still..!).
When I trail the shops and think that, hey, I’d look great in that dress, I should buy it, my Tom Ford miracle invariably materialises itself in front of me and, nah, nothing quite compares. That’s what I call an investment buy you see; not simply something that pays for itself but something that prevents you from dropping cash on crap you don’t really need.
But I think I forgot the point of this post to begin with... ah yes, I didn’t forget after all. The news is, my Christmas Dress still fits! Despite a year-worth of slacking, I can still do the zip up effortlessly! Of course, sitting in it is a different matter but it wasn’t easy at the best of times anyway.
