These were the designs from her collection for next autumn/winter – and she has a personal relationship with each one which almost amounts to a love affair. She knows every stitch, every seam; the construction of the fabric and the inner “secrets” such as the shoulder pads and the paneling details which make for perfect posture and a strict, hourglass silhouette with no lumps and bumps.
This is only the second collection she has put her name to – and is she learning.
She wore one of the dresses herself, in pewter silk gazar, epaulette-sleeved and uncorsetted - unlike the dresses she showed for spring/summer which each had a built-in, “obi” corset.
“This time, we have made the corset as a separate item. I’ve talked to my customers and found they would rather have the option of wearing the dresses without.”
Hence the addition of a fine, cotton and power-mesh corset, lightly-boned, which sits under the bust, does not “push your boobs up too high – that’s vulgar” and clings to the body, rather than gripping it.
The lengths are shorter, too, much like the one Victoria wears herself, just on the knee. It is a length which finds more favour, she says – and which anyway she prefers to wear herself- than the slightly retro, mid-calf hemlines of last season.
Still, the dresses suggest a scenario where Joan Crawford has just walked onto the set of “MadMen”, the vintage advertising TV series renowned as much for its costume accuracy as its slang and jargon and sexism of the era.
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