Black puff-sleeve dress with pleated silver panels

The dress is black crepe, built around two sculpted puff sleeves that stop above the elbow and a bodice panel of knife-pleated silver satin that runs on the diagonal from one shoulder to the waist. The skirt is pieced: black panels folded like paper over more of the same pleated silver, so the metallic shows in the gaps when she moves and disappears when she stands still.

It is an evening dress that does not need a coat until it is properly cold: the sleeves do the work of one. Worn here with nothing else, hair down, the smartwatch kept on because she always keeps it on. Spring and autumn, cocktails or an event with a long walk from the car. A pointed heel, black, is the obvious answer; a flat would be the braver one.

Concrete at seven in the evening is the most flattering wall there is. She has checked.