Fashion journalist Jess Cartner-Morley has selected an acid-yellow mesh dress by Sarah Burton for Givenchy as one of Fashion Museum Bath’s Dress of the Year choices for 2025. A navy three-piece suit from Giorgio Armani’s final collection was chosen alongside it, the museum and Bath & North East Somerset Council announced on October 8, 2026.
Cartner-Morley said the Givenchy dress could help tell the story of 2025, including arguments over women’s bodies and bodily autonomy. That is her explanation for the selection, rather than evidence of a shared interpretation among the public or fashion industry.
A choice shaped by the year
The dress is from Burton’s debut collection for Givenchy. Cartner-Morley’s argument, as described in her Guardian article, presents the mesh design not simply as a sexualized garment but as a way to consider empowerment and control over how women’s bodies are viewed.
The headline framing of the choice as “not about sex but empowerment” reflects Cartner-Morley’s stated perspective. The available reporting does not establish that the garment has one definitive meaning, or that viewers interpret it uniformly.
The selection also places a look from Burton’s first Givenchy collection beside a suit from Armani’s final collection. The museum’s announcement identifies both garments as the 2025 selections, making the pairing the central result rather than the Givenchy dress alone.
A long-running museum selection
Fashion Museum Bath’s Dress of the Year scheme began in 1963 and was founded by Doris Langley Moore, according to the museum. Each year’s selection is a curator’s or selector’s choice, so it records a considered judgment about fashion rather than a claim that a garment represents a universal consensus.
The museum’s current circumstances are also relevant to the announcement. It left the Assembly Rooms in 2022 and is closed while plans are developed for a new home at Bath’s Old Post Office. The museum says construction is due to begin in 2027 and that it expects to reopen in 2030; those dates are plans, not confirmation that work has begun or the museum has reopened.
Cartner-Morley’s choice gives the scheme a contemporary theme through a garment she links to debates about bodily autonomy, while the Armani suit adds a selection tied to the designer’s final collection. The evidence supports those points as the selector’s rationale and the museum’s announcement, but does not establish broader public reaction or a definitive cultural meaning for either garment.