The BGD (Bad Girl Dress)

According to Shane Watson in yesterday’s Sunday Times Style, the BGD (Bad Girl Dress) is as crucial in one’s wardrobe as the white shirt, the black pump or, indeed, the scaffold-esque wonderwear that underpins it. We’ve all got one - the dress with a mind of its own, the dress that gets you into a whole world of trouble, the dress that is The Dress. It may not be scandalously short, nor siren red, and it certainly isn’t as facetious as its sluttier younger sister, The Pulling Dress (although it could probably teach her a thing or two). No, it varies from person to person - one girl’s crotch-skimming leather frock is another girl’s backless maxi, or even her vintage Le Smoking YSL tuxedo.

Watson’s excellent point was that The BGD comes in many incarnations - each as varied as the wearers themselves. It’s hard to imagine Bianca Jagger’s Studio 54 shenanignans being half as heady in a thigh-skimming mini, or Marilyn’s breathy serenade to JFK being quite as saucy had she been wearing the white dress from The Seven Year Itch. Instead she chose a floor-sweeping nude number, sprayed with rhinestones and so tight she had to be sewn into it, with no room for any underwear. It takes the wearer, and amplifies the Bad. For example, Jessica Rabbit lamented, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way”, and her curve-clinging backless red gown was, too. But what was the ultimate BGD transformation? Undisputedly Bad Sandy in the closing scene of Grease. Yes, her oil-slick leggings and off-the-shoulder top did not a dress make (remember what I said about variety?), but the ensemble was unparalleled in its superhero-esque sartorial powers. And that’s exactly what The BGD should be - the cape to your Clark Kent specs and the kryptonite to the good girl within.

Originally published for Ly.st