As seen on Adele - the dresses that may be the answer to every curvy girl's prayers

Just who is fashion's most discerning customer, do you think?A skinny Alexa Chung type? The editor of French Vogue? Given the letters that arrive in my inbox, you'd be wrong on both counts.The most knowledgeable, forensic, well-researched customer is the size 16 or above woman. Why? Because she's so badly served by both high-end and High Street fashion — offered either nothing in her size or given scaled-up versions of existing designs — that she has had to become an expert merely to get dressed at all.Ask any bigger woman where she shops and she will tell you with an exhausted sigh where to get the right cut of trouser, a dress with wider arm holes, a coat that not only does up but gives you a waist and a pair of long boots you can actually pull on.
Shopping for the bigger woman has become an assault course as High Street brands, eager to cut costs, have compromised on fabric, structure (a dress with darts is more expensive than a shift) and design. Finding bigger pieces with an edgy fashion sensibility is nigh-on impossible.Belle of the Ball Program seeks prom dresses.But this is about to change. Evans, which has tried in the past to escape its dowdy plus-size image by collaborating with singer Beth Ditto, has pulled off something of a coup.It has hired the edgy, bohemian design duo Clements Ribeiro — husband and wife team Suzanne Clements and Inacio Ribeiro — to come up with a collection that is unapologetically sexy and very, very fashion.
This is a collection that is bound to sell out, not least because of its most devoted fan: Adele. She wore a Clements Ribeiro dress for her live performance at the Albert Hall last year and snatched dresses from their not-yet-finished autumn/winter collection for Evans for both the Grammys and the Brits.‘She is everything you'd imagine she'd be,' says Inacio. ‘She's such a great muse because she's not a woman who wants to change herself. She's a big, tall girl, but she carries herself so well.'As the first journalist to get a glimpse of the collection, I rifle through the dresses, skirts and blouses, which go on sale on Saturday, and can see Clements Ribeiro have broken just about every rule in the book when it comes to plus-size clothes: horizontal stripes; print; colour blocking; box pleats; sheer; shiny, look-at-me fabrics.‘We considered the rules, and then we bent them,' says Suzanne. ‘The stripes are not blocky, they're delicate.'
The couple met while studying at Central Saint Martins college. They graduated during the last recession, in the early Nineties, so decided to pool their resources.Their use of colour and print was a breath of fresh air in that monochrome era and has always had its fans, such as Kate Moss. After seven years at Cacharel in Paris, the duo made a triumphant return to the London catwalk last year. But in all those years, they admit they'd never designed with a bigger girl in mind.