Rick Owens Wrap Dress – Acid/Black

Cupro is worth understanding before buying this, because it is the reason the dress hangs the way it does. It is a regenerated cellulose, spun from cotton linter, which is the short fibre left clinging to the seed after ginning and is otherwise waste. Chemically it is a plant fibre; in the hand it is closer to silk, cool to the touch, fluid, with a low lustre and almost no spring. That combination is unusual and it is why a wrap dress in cupro falls in a column instead of standing away from the body at the hip, which is where most wrap dresses fail.

The construction is deliberately conventional so the cloth can do the work: a V neckline, short sleeves, a self-tie at the waist, and a wrap silhouette to the mid-calf. There is no seaming trick and no asymmetry. What makes it a piece from this house rather than from anywhere else is the restraint, and the fact that the material was chosen for how it moves rather than for what it is called.

A wrap dress is the most forgiving shape there is and the easiest to make badly, and the difference is almost always the cloth. This one is right. It is also the piece we hand to someone who wants something from this house that does not require a decision, which is a smaller part of the line than people expect.

Cupro is one of the fabrics the house returns to across its dresses, chosen for a silk hand in a fibre that will take a wash.

One hundred percent cupro, made in Italy. V neckline, short sleeves, wrap silhouette with a self-tie waist, midi length.

A wrap adjusts through the waist, so this accommodates a wider range than a fitted dress of the same nominal size, and the shoulder is what to size for. Cupro has almost no stretch and very little recovery, so it hangs from the shoulder rather than following the body, and it will not spring back if it is pulled. Midi length, which reads longer on a shorter frame and is worth thinking about before ordering.

With flat shoes, since the length is doing the work and a heel makes it formal in a way the cloth is not. Under a cropped leather jacket, where the tie at the waist sits below the hem of the jacket. On its own in summer.

Cupro is a cellulosic and is markedly weaker wet than dry, so hand wash cool, never wring it, and dry it flat rather than on a hanger, where the weight of the wet cloth will lengthen it permanently. It creases and presses out easily on a low iron. Our care guidance covers cupro and the other cellulosics in more detail.

For the longer-sleeved version in the same fibre, the Abito Wrap Dress in cupro. Cut as a slip, the Slip Dress in cupro. For a top in the same register, the SL Tommykite V. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.