As his memoir is published, designer Roland Mouret tells The Guardian how a zip and a seam trick created the Galaxy dress.
One of the most photographed dresses of the past 30 years is back in conversation because its designer has written a memoir. Roland Mouret's I Am Roland Mouret: The Butcher's Boy Who Dressed the World is published today by Quercus, and The Guardian has run an interview in which he explains how the Galaxy dress came about.
A simple idea about seams
According to The Guardian, the story starts in 1998. Mouret had shown his first collection at London fashion week and needed a way to make good clothes quickly. Working with a small British atelier, he learned that a longer seam costs no more to produce than a shorter one. "If you extend a top by 50cm, it becomes a whole outfit," he told the paper. "Focusing on dresses gives you a signature piece at the right price."
The result was the Galaxy, a fitted dress with an industrial zip down the back. The Guardian reports that it was worn by Beyoncé, Halle Berry and Victoria Beckham, whom Mouret later mentored, and that its silhouette helped define London fashion in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Mouret describes it as a female version of a man's suit and says it was designed with comfort and a sense of masculinity in mind, not only glamour.
The zip, and who skipped it
Mouret says he always pictured the people he dressed from behind, and that the back zip was part of that point of view. The Guardian notes that some high-profile wearers asked for the hardware to go. Catherine, Princess of Wales, reportedly had a version made without it, and Robin Wright, who played the president in House of Cards, explained to Mouret that the gold zip had to be removed for the character. In the book, Wright is quoted as saying that for a woman in charge, "that part of me has to be invisible."
A look that outlived its maker's control
The Guardian reports that Mouret is no longer at the helm of his own label. After the pandemic hit his niche of eveningwear and event dressing, the brand went into administration in 2021 and changed hands. Clothes still carry his name, the paper says, but they are not his. The Galaxy is no longer made new, though similar sheath dresses from the label have been worn by figures including Ivanka, Melania and Lara Trump, according to the report.
The Guardian's writer links that bodycon silhouette to a political aesthetic in the United States, and asked Mouret why it has been adopted. He answered that "fashion is just a reflection of the sociopolitics of its time." That reading of the trend is the Guardian's and the designer's, not a settled fact.
From £1,750 to about £200
The price history shows how far the dress has travelled. In 2015, ten years after it first appeared, buyers could get a new one for £1,750, The Guardian says. Today, resale sites list used examples for not much more than £200. Quercus describes the memoir as the story of a butcher's son from a rural village in the Pyrenees who became one of fashion's best-known names. Mouret himself writes that the Galaxy "proved to me that my signature was not my name, but my technique."
Picture credit: Quercus (book cover). Design: Savvy VibeZ
