There was a time in the mid-Noughties–somewhere in between the indie sleaze genesis and Victoria Beckham moving to Los Angeles in 2007–when young women made the collective decision to flash block-colored bra straps beneath delicate vest tops. This isn’t what Katie Holmes is doing in this photograph–captured, as she so often is, “running errands” in Mary-Janes–but there is a neat Venn diagram: that muted rouge vest creating a layer of intrigue underneath a shove-it-on-and-go slip.
I use the words “shove-it-on-and-go” because the slip dress has always functioned as a sort of low-effort shortcut into cool: in part because the design was originally intended to be worn as a boudoir-ish undergarment. Of course, not much has happened in the centuries that have passed since then–with perhaps the exception of the underwear-as-outerwear movement–and the slip dress perhaps telegraphs the same things still: decadence and freedom.
Unlike, say, the corset, the slip dress doesn’t force a shape onto a person. It is a disaffected cool, revealing but not exposing, that says: “Yes, I might be running errands around Manhattan but I am doing so with a just-showered sense of casual ease.” It is Rihanna lounging poolside in a Hot Wok slip in 2019; it is Naomi Campbell stalking John Galliano’s spring 1996 catwalk in a bias-cut chemise; and it is Kate Moss in that almost-nude Liza Bruce creation in 1993 that just sold for $2,750.