Mini Wool Bouclé Dress

The tailored mini was one of the decisive silhouettes of Archive I's column dresses board: the 1960s shift appearing across photographs from Lagos and London and New York simultaneously — a young woman in a white shift, a Vogue editorial in colour-blocked mini, the clean armhole and unfussy neckline consistent across all of them. The mini works because the simplicity of the silhouette concentrates all the information above the knee. Every decision is visible.

In navy wool bouclé, with a geometric print of red and blue marks placed across the surface, this dress makes those decisions with precision. The marks reference the painted game board surfaces in the Archive I study — folk-art objects in which geometric forms were applied by hand, each unit slightly different from the last, the irregularity evidence of the making. On bouclé, those marks sit on a surface that catches them differently at every angle.

The raw bouclé edge at the hem is deliberate — the weave acknowledged rather than concealed, the same logic as the wing skirt. Straight cut through the body. Fully lined in silk.

Edition of 49.