Bath Museum Picks Burton 'Naked' Dress, Armani Finale — SkimNews
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- Fashion Museum Bath asked a fashion editor to pick its Dress of the Year 2025, a program founded in 1963 by Doris Langley Moore whose past picks include Mary Quant, Alexander McQueen, and Jennifer Lopez's internet-breaking Versace Grammy dress.
- Sarah Burton's daffodil mesh 'naked' dress with visible retro underpinnings — from her debut collection as Givenchy's creative director — was selected as the womenswear pick.
- The selector framed 2025's red-carpet naked-dress trend, citing Julia Fox in transparent mesh and Margot Robbie and Zoë Kravitz in similar looks, as a statement about bodies and US women's bodily autonomy rather than sex appeal.
- Giorgio Armani's final menswear collection — soft shoulders, fluid fabrics, layered — shown at an emotional, elegiac Milan runway weeks after his death in September 2025, was selected as the menswear pick.
- The author credited Armani with inventing the smart-casual mode of menswear that now dominates global cities, pioneering gender-fluid dressing, and opposing fast-fashion's churn decades before the industry caught up.
- The Fashion Museum Bath closed in 2022 and is rebuilding inside the city's old post office, with a new museum set to open in 2030; its collection is currently stored in Wiltshire and viewable online.
Why it matters: Both pieces enter the permanent collection of a major British fashion museum shuttered since 2022 and not reopening until 2030, converting Sarah Burton's first Givenchy outing and Armani's last collection into permanent historical artifacts rather than seasonal press.
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