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The Lucky Dress
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Diminutive British fashion powerhouse Daniella Helayel transformed royal consort Kate Middleton and created an army of converts with her Lucky dress. As she launches her next cruise collection, Anne McElvoy sits down with the Issa designer.
She’s the designer who can make grownup professional females with wardrobes full of sensible clothes dream of First Communion dresses—and dare to wear white after their wedding day.
Daniella Helayel, a diminutive powerhouse of British fashion, is on a summer mission to make us All White on the night—or even in the day.
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Credited with turning Prince William’s girlfriend, Kate Middleton, from a safe-looking Chelsea girl into a confident and quirky dresser, she’s sponsored a transformation royal watchers have dubbed “Post-Diana NuGlam.”
Princess Beatrice, for the next generation, also parties forth in Issa.
Helayel’s classic frocks, with their flattering contours and easy fabrics, have become a staple for women who don’t know where the iron is. That must surely include Madonna, who wore an Issa dress to soften her look, when she was pictured recently in Africa, on her quest to adopt another baby.
I encountered Issa clothes at a Vogue charity sale, as Jemima Khan stretched out a languid hand to grab the same bargain. “Please, no,” I thought. “You have a trust fund and (sometimes) Hugh Grant as a boyfriend. My need is so much greater than yours.”
Fortunately, Ms. Khan was diverted: I grabbed a frock—and never looked back: Issa converts are for life.
On Thursday, Helayel launched her next cruise collection in New York.
Perhaps it’s her Brazilian heritage that makes her comfortable with strong southern colors and contrasts—strong black, royal blue, and pinky-red prints, trailing seasonal butterfly patterns, and satisfying poncho-based capes in pleated fabrics, to swirl dramatically over jeans or short skirts.
In the doldrums of economic gloom, she’s also cheered us by rehabilitating the look we thought we’d never dare to wear beyond bridal day: a white dress, in her trademark Lucky style.
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Anne McElvoy writes the main weekly political column on domestic and international issues at the London Evening Standard. She is a regular broadcaster, appearing on Newsnight and Question Time, among other programs. She has published two books on Germany, The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life & Legacy in 1992 and she was co-author of the memoirs of the spymaster Markus Wolf, Man Without a Face.
Why is TankerTodd still allowed to post on this website? He is on other sites bragging about how Doctor Tiller deserved what he got.
He is defending murderers. Is this "examining all sides of the issue"?
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