A.W.A.K.E. MODE has spent more than a decade making the case that a dress can behave like a piece of design. Natalia Alaverdian, a Russian-Armenian designer raised in Belgium, founded the London label in 2012, having arrived at fashion by way of the editor’s desk as fashion director at Harper’s Bazaar Russia. The name itself, an acronym for All Wonderful Adventures Kindle Enthusiasm, points to a label that takes its work seriously without taking itself too seriously. Her dresses are planned rather than simply sewn, built on the sculptural, architectural silhouettes and deconstructed cuts that have become the house language, with references to art history folded in and a wearability that keeps the whole thing grounded. Stocked by Net-a-Porter and Dover Street Market, the brand sits in that useful pocket of contemporary luxury where the ideas are ambitious and the clothes still go to dinner. Below are the A.W.A.K.E. MODE dresses worth your attention now, grouped by the thinking that links them.

The bib-front, four ways

The bib-front is the clearest signature in the collection, a squared panel that sits high across the chest like a pinafore rethought for grown-up occasions. In its longest form it becomes the Bib-Front Maxi Dress in Pale Pink, where the floor-skimming column keeps its composure and the soft blush stops the architecture from reading severe. The same silhouette in Black is the one to reach for when you want the cut to speak and the colour to step back, a maxi that carries as easily to a gallery opening as to a wedding. Shorten the line and firm it up and you arrive at the Bib-Front Structured Dress with Open Back in Light Grey Melange, where the flecked grey warms a body-conscious shape and the open back answers the front’s restraint with a measure of exposure. Its White twin is the more graphic of the pair, all clean plane and precise seam, the sort of dress that photographs as pure line. Between the four, the bib-front makes its case as the detail you return for.

The sculpted swan

If one shape explains what sculptural means once the dress leaves the hanger, it is the Swan. The name lives in the neckline, a curved sweep that rises and folds the way a swan’s neck does. The Opened Neckline Sculpted Swan Dress in White is the more romantic reading, the parted neck framing the collarbone and the white lending it the calm of a gallery piece. The Closed Neckline Sculpted Swan Dress in Black seals the same shape into one unbroken line, so the sculpture carries from across a room and the black does the rest of the work. Both would anchor an occasion, the white leaning towards daytime ceremony and the black towards the evening. Seen side by side, they are a small lesson in how far a single idea can travel once the colour and the neckline change.

Column cuts and side panels

Not every piece here announces itself. Two dresses share a quieter device, a side panel seamed in to shape the body without any visible effort. The High Neck Pencil Dress with Side Panel Detail in White is the most covered-up piece in the edit and, arguably, the most useful, its high neck and pencil line carrying from a working morning through to dinner without a change of register. The Tank Top Maxi Dress with Side Panel Detail in Black takes the same panelling to the floor, the tank neckline and slim straps keeping the top half relaxed while the side seam draws one long vertical down the body. It is the kind of black dress that looks like very little and does a great deal.

What holds the eight together is restraint used as a tool rather than a rule. There is almost no surface decoration here, no print doing the heavy lifting. The interest comes instead from where a seam falls, how a neckline is cut and the way a panel redraws the line of the body. It is design you feel as much as see, and it rewards a second look. Buy one and you tend to reach for it far more than its plainer neighbours in the wardrobe, which is the quiet economics of a good dress. That is the particular pleasure of the label, and the reason these dresses tend to outlast the season in which they were bought.

New to the house, most people start with the practical questions. If you are weighing where it sits, our view on whether A.W.A.K.E. MODE is a luxury brand lays out the case. For the wearing of these shapes, how to style A.W.A.K.E. MODE goes through the styling in detail, and if you are building a wider wardrobe, the designers we gather under brands like A.W.A.K.E. MODE sit happily beside it. When you want to see the full run in one place, the designer dresses edit is where these pieces live.