Somewhere between John Singer Sargent’s portrait of the luscious, black-clad Madame X (1884) and Margaret Thatcher’s wedding gown with matching blue muff (1951), velvet lost its way. A fabric that once stood both for flamboyance and status – it is no coincidence Henry VIII liked the stuff so much – became bloated and stuffy. What had looked fabulously decadent became twee and tame, the stuff of soft furnishings and little girls’ Sunday best.
Velvet has its mojo back in a major way. Major, because this isn’t one of those trends that comes out of nowhere and disappears two weeks later. The trends that truly permeate real life – the move from skinny jeans to sportswear at the weekends, for instance, or the death of the knee-length skirt (still mourning that one) – tend to make slow, steady headway, until one day you look around and realise they are everywhere. Velvet is that kind of trend. It has been a feature of every catwalk season since 2013, when there was a gorgeous Christopher Kane dress with slashes of skin visible between panels of navy velvet, which felt like the first velvet dress in a long time to have the attitude of a pair of ripped jeans. At Victoria Beckham’s New York show last month, the crushed velvet peppermint dress was the piece everybody wanted.
Velvet is glorious stuff. The way it drapes, the way you can smudge your fingertip across the pile and change it from matt to shine and back again. But the key to making it look cool isn’t to properly appreciate it – in fact, quite the opposite. When velvet is used with reverential awe, draped as if on a museum mannequin, it kills it. A velvet blazer with low-slung jeans, however: now you’re talking. Or wide velvet trousers with trainers or backless loafers. A velvet party dress works best in a quirky colour, or worn with ankle boots instead of proper shoes, or with hair that looks like it hasn’t been brushed. You don’t want to look dressed for a formal portrait, so go for something a bit off. (A case in point: the sleeves I’m wearing.) If the finished effect is a bit wayward, you are on the right track.
• Jess wears dress, £300, by Isabel Marant Etoile, from avenue32.com.
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management.
