July 11, 2021 at 08:00AM

Rixo is a great British success story. Best friends Henrietta Rix and Orlagh McCloskey created their fashion business from the front room in their student flat in 2015. Five years later, their vintage-style dresses have had a colossal impact on how women in the UK dress. I can’t remember the last wedding I went to where I didn’t see a guest wearing Rixo, and it’s the brand that is mentioned the most among my friends. Look in any high-street store and you’ll also see its influence.

Rixo creates beautiful silk dresses you can wear to any occasion and looks to vintage prints and silhouettes to ensure that these are classics you can treasure. When you’re spending £250 on a dress, you want it to be something you can wear again and again, and the Rixo aesthetic is the antidote to throwaway fashion. Its Instagram page demonstrates just how versatile these dresses can be and the broad appeal they have—you’ll see mothers and daughters twinning in Rixo, women wearing the dresses with trainers to brunch, dresses worn by a group of bridesmaids and silk slips even used as beach cover-ups.

“We don’t design for one specific type of woman. No matter your age, shape or size, we want our pieces to feel flattering,” McCloskey tells me. “No matter how nice a print or design is, the cut has to be perfect to allow for comfortable and confident wear. In terms of cut, most of our dress styles are bias-cut, which is really flattering, as it moulds to the wearer’s body. Creating bias-cut pieces is more expensive, but we’d rather sacrifice the expense to ensure our customers feel great and are getting true value. We tweak every single piece in our collections—even our classic shapes—to continuously improve them and ensure all the details are absolutely perfected.”

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The prints and silhouettes will be reinvented each season, but there are always consistent themes and familiar styles in every collection. “Our Rose dress is a shape we launched in our first collection and a silhouette that is so well-loved by our customers that we have reinvented it in new prints in collections following.”

Slip dresses, puffy sleeves, updated polka dots, Instagrammable animal prints and clashing prints have all long been a Rixo signature. However, Henrietta notes that the most popular dresses are often the wrap and button-down styles. “It’s because they are so versatile—you can wear on their own, layered over a T-shirt and jeans for a more laid-back look or even as a swim cover-up while on holiday.”

Keep scrolling to see the best Rixo dresses you can buy right now.

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Next up, see our autumn/winter 2021 trend report.

This story was published at an earlier time and has since been updated.

Author Emma Spedding | Whowhatwear
Selected by CWC

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