It is a grey, grey nasty day here in Georgia. It’s been raining since I drove to work ay 7 am and it will continue to rain, it seems, until the gloom slowly kills me. So what’s the best way to cheer myself up? Fashion shows! We’ve done Gucci, Marc Jacobs, Hermes…but right now, I want to draw everyone’s attention to a smaller show: Hervé Léger by Max Azria.

The iconic Hervé Léger bandage dresses have been around for quite a while (finding one at a vintage store is a major core) but have experienced somewhat of a resurgence in popularity in the past year or two, with shapely young celebrities from Hayden Panettwhatserface to Kim Kardashian (we’ll leave an explanation of my bizarre love for Kim for another day…) wearing the brand, which is now fronted by Azria (of BCBG fame).

There are a few things that I love about Hervé Léger. First, they don’t pretend to be anything they’re not. They make bandage dresses and lots of ‘em. Sparkly ones, muted ones, short ones, and shorter ones. They’re true to their silhouette and they know that their clients expect something sexy, body-conscious, and attention-getting. A couple of season ago when everyone was making enormous tent dresses, Hervé Léger was still turning out getups so tight that my girl Kim probably couldn’t sit down in them.

Also, Hervé Léger tends to make clothes that look better on their customers than on their models, and how often do we say that about a designer? A woman with hips, boobs, a butt, and even a bit of a tummy can pull these dresses off much better than a 5’11, 115 pound Russian teenager. From what I hear, they’re also figure-flattering on far more people than you’d expect; they act almost as a full-body Spanx, alternately holding you in and making you curvy exactly where you’d want them to.

So what did we see from them, besides lots of gorgeous cocktail dresses? Well, we saw a good bit of icy grey. Sometimes in solids and sometimes in stripes, the shade was in a huge number of the 49 looks that were shown and made it very easy to see the signature banding that makes up the dresses. And you know I love grey, so I’ll end my comments there.

We also saw lots of ombre, something that I don’t think most designers use as much as they should. It can look cheesy, but when done correctly, the effect is beautiful and definitely attention-grabbing. My thoughts were mostly, but not entirely, positive for the way that Azria chose to incorporate the shading into the collection, and I think it’s a color scheme that’s worth the experiment.

And then there were stripes! Stripes aren’t something that I’ve seen Leger do often, probably since they compete with the natural stripe effect of the bandage dresses. The stripes often gave the collection an 80s feel that has been quite popular on runways this season, and while it was at times too bold for my taste, I have to give them at least a bit of credit for trying.

But my favorite aspect of the whole show was the SWIMWEAR! Mind you, I can’t remember the last time I put on a bathing suit, let alone a designer one, but I love it when a designer branches out and uses one of their signature elements in a totally brilliant way. In this case, the traditional Leger bandage look is perfect for swim, and the only thing really surprising is that they didn’t think of this earlier.

Buy Herve Leger dress through eherveleger.com.

Images via Style