Harris Tapper Pairo Dress: Shirts, Skirts and Trousers

Harris Tapper Pairo Dress: Shirts, Skirts and Trousers

The Harris Tapper Pairo dress is an embroidered velvet maxi dress from a label that launched with women's shirting alone. I go through founders Sarah Harris Gould and Lauren Tapper's shirts, dresses, trousers and skirts.

Harris Tapper Tina Top and the Shirting Story

The pair launched with women's shirting alone and refused to expand until customers demanded it. That patience is why the fit is the thing people talk about first: years of work with patternmakers and fabric suppliers before the range grew at all.

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The shirt that started it

Shirting is still the centre of gravity. The brand's phrase for its own aesthetic is subversive femininity and sculptural minimalism, which in practice means a professional shirt with one unexpected proportion.

Dresses for the working week

Gould grew up in a household where both parents' roles at home and at work were equal, and she has said that shaped the brand's premise of championing women in their careers. The dresses are designed to serve that day, not to dictate it.

Trousers that answer to the shirt

Pants and skirts arrived because customers kept asking what to wear with the shirts. The whole range grew outward from one garment. I went deeper on a related idea in All Three: New York Shirts, Tops and Trousers to Layer.

Skirts, sculpted

The label describes itself as a study in equilibrium between the ascetic and the voluptuous. The skirts are where that balance is most literal. If you want to keep going, Favorite Daughter Clothing: Tops, Trousers, Skirts and Bustiers is the one I would read next.

Our honest take

A brand run by two people from Auckland with no stores of their own has ended up dressing Moda's own founder. Starting with one perfect thing remains the most underrated strategy in fashion.