Holiday Dressing

December, and considerably less sequinned than the month suggests. Fifteen pieces, most of them still wearable in March.

The problem with what shops sell in December is that it is designed to be photographed on one night and then never worn again, at a price that assumes you have not noticed. We buy this edit against a single question, which is whether the piece has a Tuesday in February in it.

That rules out most of what the season offers and leaves something better: dark colours with a texture rather than a shine, one genuine piece of glitter for whoever wants it, and a great deal of velvet, which is the only fabric that manages to be festive and completely ordinary at the same time.

What is in it

Velvet, four ways

A trouser, a jacket, a long skirt and one dress. All four go to a party, and three of the four go to work the following week without anybody blinking.

Black that is not flat

Six pieces, all black, all different cloths. Photographed together they look like a mistake; in a room they are the reason people ask where the dress is from.

One sequinned thing

Because sometimes that is genuinely what is wanted, and buying it badly at the last minute is worse than buying it well in November.

A knit for the family part

Most of December is not a party. It is a long lunch with people who will comment, and there is no dress that solves that as well as a very good knit.

Something for New Year in a cold house

Athens in January inside an apartment built in 1968 is colder than outside. This is not a joke and the edit takes it seriously.

A gift that is not a guess

Three pieces that work across two sizes — a stole, a knit, a silk shirt — for anyone buying for someone else. Gift returns run ninety days.

The December timetable

The edit goes up in the second week of November and the alterations diary is full by about the twenty-fifth. That is the real deadline: not the last shipping date, but the last day Konstantinos can hem something and mean it. We publish it on the shop door each year and it is always earlier than anybody wants.