Burton knew the house from the inside. She joined the studio in 1996 and became head of womenswear design in 2000. By her appointment as creative director in May 2010, she had spent fourteen years working alongside Lee Alexander McQueen. The precision, unexpected references and tension between beauty and unease were part of her daily work.

For Resort 2011, familiar studio references returned, among them Hans Bellmer’s dolls and samurai armour. Shoulders remained emphatic and torsos closely shaped, while softer fabrics and opening skirts brought a lighter touch. The collection’s drama lay as much in the release of fabric as in its control.

Presented before her first main-season womenswear show that autumn, Resort 2011 gave Burton an intimate setting for her first statement. Her direction emerged through proportion and movement, in clothes that carried the house’s sculptural character with a lighter touch.

The red gown holds that shift in a particularly vivid form. Its fitted torso gives way to an expansive skirt, allowing the fabric to sweep beyond the body.

Corresponding to the collection’s closing look, Look 29, the gown draws its impact from contrasts. Dark motifs stretch across bright silk organza; rounded sleeves rise above a closely fitted waist. At the front, the short hem reveals the legs. Behind, the train carries the print across a much wider surface.

The bodice is shaped over an internal mesh corset. A deep V-neckline opens between the sculpted shoulders, while the low back offers another interruption to the fitted form. The structure is there, but the fabric gives the dress its expression.

Pleats gather the dark petals at the waist and draw them out along the skirt. As the organza moves, the print opens and closes with it. Colour gives the gown its immediate force; the cut gives that colour room to travel.

At the back, the open neckline gives way to a long train. It extends the gown’s proportions and lets the poppy print unfold across the floor.

Amal Clooney wore this design to her rehearsal dinner in Venice in September 2014. Michelle Obama wore a specially made version featuring the collection’s red-and-black poppy print to the White House state dinner in January 2011.

For Obama’s gown, an asymmetric neckline and full-length skirt gave the print another form. In Venice, the rising hem and trailing skirt brought the Resort 2011 silhouette into a different setting.

Its appearances in Venice and Washington belong to the design’s wider history. The example at Three Over Six carries its own appeal: a vivid, sculpted gown from the beginning of Burton’s creative directorship.