The BodyCon or the Con of the body?

The BodyCon dress, otherwise known as the bandage dress, was first designed by Hervé Leroux in the early 90s. Hervé Peugnet was the designer’s original name but it was too ‘bulky’ according to Karl Lagerfeld, and so he came to be known as Herve Léger after he went to work for Lagerfeld at Fendi. Hervé Léger kept this name until he started his own collection as Hervé Leroux in the year 2000.

(If you don’t wanna read my babble… skip to the bottom to find out where you can get this look!)

The first version of the runway BodyCon pieces designed by Léger look similar DNA to the current style of the dress – even though his dress was only BodyCon on top. This you can see in the photo below – where midi skirts were worn with tight fitting tops on the runway by Karen Mulder, Cindy Crawford, and Eva Herzigova in 1995.

Not only did Crawford wear the dress on the runway, but she wore the LBD version to the Vogue anniversary party in 1988.

For 5 years after this runway show, the BodyCon dress was silent as they couldn’t find designers capable of making the company a bandage look that they would be happy with.

“I didn’t want to launch until I truly understood the whole idea. A bandage dress isn’t a woven, it’s all knitted on a knitting machine and is a completely different concept,” Azria – a Tunisian fashion designer who founded the women’s clothing brand ‘BCBGMAXAZRIA’ and is also the designer, chairman and CEO of the BCBG Max Azria Group (a global fashion house that encompasses over 20 brands) – explained.

“People assume it’s cut-and-sew, but there’s no cutting. It’s knitted in a panel and then attached. To understand the process and technical aside took a while, and we wanted to make sure it would be unique in the market.”

With a BodyCon dress, you have to find the balance between stylish and slutty – just straight-up showing too much. I love this boot (my favourite!) with this dress as it gives it an edge without taking it too far over the edge.

The dresses can go very wrong, very quickly. Whenever the material is too thin, or the dress is too tight – it never looks good.