Articles

Drop it like it’s hot

When I was 14, my parents packed me and my sister off to the Lycée Molière, a high school in Brussels known more for its roster of aristocrats than its academics. Every spring the school held a formal dance, and for this my sister and I needed dresses.

We called our mother and a week later a package arrived. Inside were two frocks, each marked with our names. As my sister unwrapped hers, a flirty strapless bubble, I tore away the tissue to reveal mine –

a dropped-waist dress with a square lace collar. “This is a child’s dress,” I wept over the phone to my mother. “Please send me another.” She refused. At the party, my sister box-stepped away while I sat scowling on the sidelines. I vowed never to wear a dropped-waist again.

But recently I was at a black-tie ball with my husband when I saw Byrdie Bell, a young New York beauty, rounding a corner in – yes – a dropped-waist dress. In a sea of empire and belted gowns, she looked refreshingly at ease, casual yet glamorous.

“The dropped waist connotes a slouchy, carefree attitude,” explains designer Thakoon Panichgul, who has made dropped-waist dresses in a palate of fabrics.

Yes, but how, as an adult woman, to wear one? Bell is all of 22, and my body doesn’t bear any resemblance to its former 14-year-old self.

I go back to history to find out, specifically to Paul Poiret’s wife Denise, owner of numerous dropped-waist gowns. “Denise gave birth to five children, so her body changed quite a bit over the years,” points out Andrew Bolton, curator of the Poiret show. Still, he says, her particulars – small breasts, slim shoulders, hips on the wide side – were the exact opposite of mine. However, according to designer Angel Sanchez, height, not width, is the important factor when it comes to a dropped waist. “This should be worn by tall women. The proportions will only make shorter women look shorter.” Designer Behnaz Sarafpour suggests wearing the look with flat shoes.

The epiphany happens at the studio of Maggie Norris, who has a dropped-waist dress with silver embroidery. “Try it on,” she goads. It makes my torso look slimmer, my hips narrower. I look chic yet nonchalant. I could have danced all night.