- 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII)
- Living
- British
- Molly Goddard
- •Hand-smocked tulle ball dresses
- •The Villanelle pink dress (Killing Eve, 2018)
- •Exuberant volumes
- •BFC Emerging Talent Award (2016)
Molly Goddard
The Ladbroke Grove designer whose hand-smocked tulle dresses — worn by Villanelle in the second season of *Killing Eve* — became the defining youthful-romantic silhouette of the late 2010s.
Molly Goddard was born in 1988 in London and raised in Ladbroke Grove. She studied at Central Saint Martins, took an MA in knitwear, graduated in 2014, and showed her first presentation in a London pub.
The Tulle
Goddard’s signature is the oversized hand-smocked tulle ball dress. The smocking — the gathered geometric stitching that gives the dresses their structural volume — is produced, per dress, over several days of hand labour. Her dresses have moved between pantomime pink, acid yellow, ivory, and saturated red; the volume has only grown. She was awarded the BFC’s Emerging Talent award in 2016 and the Vogue/BFC Designer Fashion Fund in 2018.
Killing Eve
In April 2018 the BBC-AMC thriller Killing Eve aired. The assassin Villanelle, in episode two, arrived at a therapist’s office in a hot-pink Molly Goddard hand-smocked tulle dress with black leather boots. The dress, then on sale for GBP 1,200, sold out within three days.
I want people to feel a little ridiculous. Ridiculous is good. — Molly Goddard
She continues to show in London.
