VILLANELLE’S KILLER TUTU DRESS

PSYCHoPatHIC assassin Villanelle, played by Jodie Comer (below) in the bbC1 spy serial Killing Eve, wore a succession of fantastic outfits, but none more iconic than this flouncy pink tulle dress – offset by a pair of balenciaga boots – in series one. Villanelle thought that she looked sweetly feminine for a session with a psychiatrist – instead she resembled a murderous doll come to life, which in one sense she was. the dress was part of designer Molly Goddard’s 2017 collection, and the show’s costume designer Phoebe de Gaye felt it suited Villanelle’s subversive streak. this was broadcasting as a fashion trailblazer – and drama using clothes to suggest mental illness. robert Seatter pairs the dress in the exhibition with the overcoat worn by benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock. ‘It is a dexterous reinvention of the Holmes cape,’ he says, ‘and it surprisingly made a complete sex symbol of benedict.’