Schiaparelli, Dior and the Art of Balancing the Body

Before I designed my own collections, I spent years as a costume designer and stylist for television and the red carpet. Costume teaches you something you never forget: a dress isn't just fabric, it's a way of telling a story about the woman wearing it.

On set, I would pore over archive photographs, old patterns and vintage garments, studying how the great designers of the past created shape. I still do. I've always loved looking backwards for inspiration, then creating a modern take that fits the way we live and dress today.

Elsa Schiaparelli has always made my heart beat a little faster. In the 1930s she treated fashion as art, with surrealist ideas, trompe l'oeil, bold colour and that unforgettable shocking pink.

What I love most is how sculptural her work was. Strong shoulders, a defined waist, a silhouette with real presence. She showed that a dress can be playful and powerful at the same time, and that confidence is the best thing a woman can wear.

Then there's Christian Dior. When he showed his New Look in 1947, after years of wartime rationing, it was pure romance: a softly rounded shoulder, a tiny nipped-in waist and a full skirt falling to mid-calf.

That mid-calf length is the ancestor of the ballerina length I adore so much. It's elegant, it moves beautifully when you walk, and it flatters almost every woman. It feels special without being formal, and it's why so many of my dresses fall to a ballerina length today.

Zip Pocket in Old Masters

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Zip Pocket in Singapore Gardens

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I have a particular soft spot for Alfred Shaheen, the Hawaiian textile designer and manufacturer whose work blossomed after the war. He printed his own fabrics, with prints so beautiful they could hang on a wall, and he turned them into sarong dresses, draped bodices and sundresses with clever shirred panels.

Shirring, where rows of gathering are stitched into the fabric, gave his dresses shape and a little give, so they hugged the body in all the right places. And his prints were always placed and scaled with the body in mind.

You'll see his influence all through my work, but nowhere more than in my Confident dress. It has a faux wrap bodice with shirred side panels that sculpt and lift the bust, just as Shaheen's shirring shaped his dresses, and a sarong-style skirt that drapes softly across the tummy. Made in a bold print like Red Tahitian Rose or Inkwell Rose, it's my modern tribute to his post-war sarong dresses.

Confident in Red Tahitian Rose

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Confident in Inkwell Rose

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You'll find the same spirit in the sarong-style skirts of my Stevie and Claridges dresses, and in my obsession with getting the scale of a print just right.

Stevie in Red Tahitian Rose

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Claridges in Wine Velvet

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This is the part that fascinates me most as a designer. Before stretch fibres became widely used, dressmakers had to make woven fabrics, which have very little natural give, follow the curves of a woman's body. They did it with pure craft:

• Darts and seams to shape fabric around the bust and waist.
• Draping to let fabric fall softly across the body and skim over areas we might prefer to soften.
• Shirring and gathers to add ease and shape at the same time.
• Clever cutting, so the fabric itself did the flattering.

These traditional techniques are still the secret behind a dress that really fits. I use them in my own designs, and today I often combine them with fabrics that have a touch of stretch, so you get the beautiful structure of the past with the comfort we all want now.

If there's one idea that runs through everything I design, it's balance. Not hiding the body, and not squeezing it into a shape it isn't, but balancing proportions so a woman's natural beauty shines.

In practice, that means:

• Lifting and supporting the bust, so it's celebrated rather than squashed.
• Defining the waist, the most feminine line of all.
• Skimming the tummy and hips with drape and movement, rather than cling.
• Balancing the shoulders and arms with the right sleeve and neckline.
• Choosing the right length, often ballerina, to give the whole figure grace.

When those proportions are in balance, something magical happens.

That's what the great designers understood, and it's what I try to do every single day.

I don't make vintage reproductions. I take the best of the past, the feminine silhouette, the draping, the prints, the craftsmanship, and give it a modern twist, made right here in London.

So when you put on one of my dresses, you're wearing a little bit of Schiaparelli's daring, Dior's romance and Shaheen's love of print and drape, designed for the life you lead today.

Love, Katya x