Now that’s what I call a party dress. Allow me to introduce the showstopper of the season, the sweetheart neckline. The cutesy name is misleading, because this is one fierce look. A dress that turns heads so fast it can cause whiplash. Strapless and curvy with a deep plunge, the sweetheart neckline made a red-carpet comeback this year – a floor-length Saint Laurent black velvet number made no fewer than three appearances in the space of a few days at the Venice film festival in August – and is primed to race into pole position when party season hots up.
But … there’s a but. I wouldn’t quibble with this dress to its face, because a person who wears this dress would think nothing of emptying a drink over you should you step out of line. But, is the sweetheart neckline not a bit retro? A bit 1983 Fulham cocktail party? Are we getting hints of Poison by Dior and the acidic notes of Bucks Fizz?
I would even go so far as to say the word vol-au-vent. I’m seeing a large clip-on sparkly earring, which is not something I own.
And yet I love this dress. I am very much here for its Jilly Cooper heroine energy, which, as it happens, is my guiding light in most things. I have written before about my love for Jilly, and it remains steadfast. A black dress with a plunging sweetheart neckline is exactly the sort a Jilly heroine would wear to a party, parking outside on a double yellow line and making an entrance in a cloud of Elnett.
It turns heads not just for the bare flesh, but for the air of excitement it brings. It is a dress you wear to make a statement, and it is no coincidence that Diana, Princess of Wales’s 1994 “revenge dress” had a sweetheart neckline. (“Diana wanted to look a million dollars,” her stylist Anna Harvey later recalled. “And she did.”) But it can be fun and lighthearted, as well as brave. It’s a dress you wear just because you fully intend to have a good time, not the one you wear when it’s a do you really should show your face at, but intend to be home for 9pm.
The sweetheart neckline is not for everyone, not least because you can’t wear a normal bra with it. I can vouch for Marks & Spencer’s low-plunging bra, which is comfortable and works, but although it goes up to cup size E it might feel too precarious for some. There is also a bold amount of flesh on show, but I’m taking comfort from the fact that this style works with any skin tone, even my decidedly unglamorous pallor.
John Singer Sargent, whose 1883-4 portrait of Madame X is the last word in sweetheart neckline chic, wrote that his sitter, Madame Gautreau, had skin of a “lavender or blotting paper colour”, which I am taking to mean I needn’t bother with self-tanning lotion.
The full-throttle drama of the sweetheart neckline is an oven-ready recipe for glamour. It doesn’t demand to be fussed with, or seasoned or garnished with accessories the way a more low-key dress does. But if it so happens that you have a showstopper piece of jewellery that doesn’t get many outings because it fights with the neckline of most clothes, this is the perfect black canvas for it.
Whether you go for statement jewellery or minimalism, keep the lines clean and clear. Jewellery should be graphic and solid, not dingly-dangly. Slick, streamlined hair works better than soft waves. Nothing cutesy, please. We are not doing Betty Boop. Don’t be fooled by the name, because this dress is no pushover. This sweetheart may have cleavage, but she has backbone too.
• This article was amended on 17 November 2023 because an earlier version gave the date of Singer Sargent’s Madame X portrait as 1916 whereas it was 1883-4.
Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Tom Ford and Bumble and bumble. Model: Sherin at Body London. Dress: River Island. Necklace: Alighieri
