BAZAAR, BASTYAN & A SHOWSTOPPING DRESS

At least half the fun of going to a party is in the anticipation: it's not just the hours spent getting ready, it's endless debate about what to wear.

The big event in the Harper's Bazaar calendar is the annual Women of the Year Awards - and the sartorial stakes are pretty high - I'm pretty sure we talked of nothing but party dresses for weeks beforehand. I had thought of wearing a very nice strapless 'MadMen' style dress I bought for a party not long after the Tiniest Trefusis was born until I came across this from my absolute favourite label, Bastyan. I hadn't thought of wearing long, but since it meant I didn't need to slather my blue-white legs in fake tan, it was pretty tempting, and as ever with Bastyan, the fabric drapes in a wonderfully flattering and luxurious way.

This is me at the party - it's not a very clear picture, but the mirror shows how nice the back is too

This is me just before we left - I've rubbed out the grim office from the background - magazine offices are much closer to The Office than they are to the Devil Wears Prada. One shoulder has a beautiful gold clasp, and the other is designed to drape - I wanted it slightly off the shoulder, so I stuck it in place with some tit tape (I'm sure there's a more elegant word for it - but you know what I mean).

The jewellery is from Carat* - they're simulated diamonds, but they're set so beautifully I defy anyone to be able to tell the difference - I wore the Pear Exquisite necklace, a pear drop tennis bracelet  and an incredibly covetable pair of drop earrings, which shivered and shimmered and caught the light most gratifyingly whenever I turned my head. I don't seem to be able to find them on the website, but these are similar.

Sometimes partywear needs to be a bit of a disguise, doesn't it - it's about costuming oneself appropriately for the occasion: and for once, at Bazaar Women of the Year, I felt appropriate.

The Mormo Maxi dress I wore is on sale in the Bastyan pop-up shop on Regents Street - if you're in the market for a party dress (or a beautiful coat like this one -  the tweed it's made from comes from the same mill as Chanel gets theirs from) then you must hurry to this oasis of loveliness and calm toot sweet because the stand-alone only exists until 24th December.

I asked Tonia Bastyan for her buys of the season - this exquisite lace 'Dia' dress [above], with jet beads that button closely up the wrists promises to be an heirloom piece: I can quite imagine putting it away after a few seasons and saving it for when the Tiniest Trefusis grows up - it's utterly beautiful and absolutely timeless. It has a very elegant wool crepe skirt, but the back is absolutely sheer lace - I've not seen anything of the quality in most Bond Street designer stores. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a better picture. It's sold out online, however, there were plenty of sizes at the pop up store.

Tonia also picked out this pony-skin coat as one of her favourite pieces - as ever with Bastyan, the devil's in the detail -  it has long woollen gauntlets under the bracelet sleeve - I don't know if they're detachable, but fortunately this is on the website so you can get a better look if you want.  Here's my snap of Tonia with the coat.

London Bastyan Pop Up Boutique 288 - 294 Regent Street W1 Tel: 020 7323 5978

WHAT TO WEAR FOR SPRING & A CONTINUING PASSION FOR BASTYAN

Winter seems so interminable in London that I can hardly remember the last time I wasn't all rugged up in layer upon layer of black, like a woolly Matryoshka doll.

But now the thermometer is making a concerted effort to stay above zero, I start to long for new clothes. I want something that shows I've cottoned onto the season's new themes and trends, without being achingly fashion forward. I’m also not temperamentally disposed to buying an entire new wardrobe of clothes each season, even if I had the money to do it, which I don’t.

I won’t be able to face the vogue for bright colours until the summer – the spring light feels too weak to take it. Nor will the white thing work for me, since I travel everywhere by tube and bus and have skin the colour of skimmed milk. But I do rather love the way that designers have re-interpreted stark white by way of a Dulux ‘Natural Hints’ colour chart. I like white when it strays as far as buttermilk, or blush or a very pale camel. One might suspect it of not being white at all, but – whatever – fashion is all about the nuance.

The purchase of the scarlet dress pre-Christmas has turned me into something of a Bastyan zealot. Now in its third season, it’s an incredibly wearable label - I love the way the designs are cut for real women: if you have great legs but are less than keen on your tummy, there are lovely skinny trousers to team with embellished tops, and empire line dresses which work as well over trousers as with opaques and a great pair of heels. Or if, like me, you’re a pear rather than an apple, the dresses are incredibly flattering, with signature draping in just the right places.

Anyway, here are a few of the things which I’ve been admiring lately because they combine my kind of shape with a nod at the colours and trends of the early spring season.

Blonde leather dress £395

This butter-soft leather dress is a bit of an investment piece, but looks so beautiful.

Zip belt dress £220

I love the versatility of this dress: it's a cool update on the LBD, and is exactly the kind of thing that could take one from work to something more interesting in the evening just by adjusting the front zip at the neckline. I know we're supposed to move away from black for the S/S 11 season, but it's just so easy to wear.

Fine leather jacket £395

This jacket would be tremendous over the dress - its skillful cut gives one a nod to rock-chick chic without going the full Joan Jett.

Twisted drape jumper £130

I'm more inclined to knitwear than tailored jackets over dresses - and this is soft and modern without being too informal. Our office is so incredibly cold on a Monday morning, I'm always on the hunt for a chic cover-up.

However, the bottom line for me is that, when it comes to new clothes, a party dress trumps work-wear everytime. Esquire's 20th Birthday party at The Berkeley's Blue Bar was the perfect setting for this rather sophisticated navy Bastyan dress. Although it's very fitted (bless you, Spanx), the front of the dress is designed to gather and drape in a way that manages to conceal rather than reveal, thankfully, and the underwired camisole you can see is a separate piece, which adds some structure. Mind you, people did keep whispering that they could see my bra, so either they were fashion ignoramuses, or I need to work harder on how the dress drapes over the camisole.

The bangles I wore with it are actually coral rather than red, and were an impulse buy from Marks and Spencers (I think they were £8).

Bastyan Cowl-neck lace-cami dress £195

NOTA BENE: I've just noticed that Bastyan is offering a 20% discount on the S/S11 collection on their website - good news for my wardrobe, bad news for my bank balance....

THE SCARLET DRESS

It's a long time since I was this obsessed by a dress. You know how it is - you see something in a shop, and you can't stop thinking about it. Every time you open your wardrobe, there's a great glaring hole where the coveted item should be, but isn't, because it's still in the shop. Every time you get dressed, even your most favourite outfit is diminished by not being the dress. And so it is with this scarlet frock from Bastyan. Red isn't a colour I usually wear, having very much a Ford Model T approach to fashion - any colour you like as long as it's black - but there's something immensely Christmassy about this particular shade of vermilion. Quite marvellous for Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve, and my sister's birthday, and, and ....you see what I'm doing here? Fashion maths. Fashion maths means you divide the price of some gorgeous object of desire by the number of occasions you think you might wear it. It always comes out as £1.22 per wear, and so it is that your brain says '£1.22? You can't even get a cappuccino for that' and it instantly becomes a complete steal.

It's not even especially expensive - it's currently reduced from £225 to £125, both on the Bastyan website and in House of Fraser, and it's silk too. What's more, Bastyan makes the most fabulously flattering frocks on the planet - Tonia Bastyan, the label's owner and designer, understands perfectly that when one is over 35 one doesn't want to be tugging things down to cover a less than perfect knee, or pinning a neckline to conceal the fact one can't get away with bra-less anymore. She uses luxurious fabrics and clever draping to drift gently over the difficult bits and enhance the parts that aren't quite yet completely disastrous. She's that all too rare thing, a designer that designs for, rather than against, all the idiosyncrasies of a woman's body, without sacrificing a strong design edge, and the net result is a collection which flatters, and is yet still completely on trend. The scarlet silk georgette goddess dress is a really good example of this, but there are many more. I could start to develop a small addiction.

Oh, see how I'm longing for it? Should I wait to find out if I get any money for Christmas? Should I brave the ghastliness of Christmas Eve at Westfield to see if they have one left in my size in case the yearning gets too great and I have to have it?


Addendum; Writing this post made the craving worse: I couldn't live without the dress. And not only did they still have my size at Westfield, my mother said that she'd get it for me for Christmas: evidently it was meant to be mine. I can't wait to unwrap it and put it on. Happy Christmas everyone.


UPDATE: October 2011 - I've just heard a whisper that the next Harper's Bazaar party is to have a black and red theme - guess what I'll be wearing? That's another nice thing about Bastyan - it's fashionable, but not so achingly on trend that you can't wear it for more than a season