Grace Potter takes Diane von Furstenberg on tour -- kind of
Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Grace Potter found the perfect dress for her current tour -- a sparkly, silk sequined ankle-length Diane von Furstenberg gown with a generous leg slit and equally generous decolletage and voluminous half-butterfly sleeves -- quite by accident.
“I actually bought it for a benefit I was going to,” Potter told us backstage at the Shrine Auditorium on Wednesday night. “But I’ve ended up wearing it just about every night. The only time I haven’t worn it in the last three weeks was when it was being dry-cleaned.”
Although Potter didn’t mention what the benefit was, she can be seen wearing the dress in photos from the April 30 Food Bank for New York City charity event. We checked in with the DVF folks who identified the dress as the Jessi allover sequin maxi dress in opal -- runway look 37 from the designer’s spring 2013 collection (retail price $2,000).
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals (Matt Burr, Scott Tournet, Benny Yurco and Michael Libramento) were in town opening for Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters, and because the fashion-loving Vermonter has been on our style radar ever since we spoke to her for a pre-Coachella piece last year, we relished the opportunity to ask her what she was wearing -- and why.
“I can be anything in this dress,” she told us, “I can be Greta Garbo, I can be Bianca Jagger, I can be Polyphonic Spree. I can do anything in this -- I can move around.”
That may have been the understatement of the night; during the show, Potter roamed about like a freshly uncaged lioness, alternatively perching on the edge of the stage and kicking off her sandals (also DVF), strapping on a guitar to trade fierce licks with her bandmates, sitting (briefly) at the keyboards, and hiking her dress up to mid-thigh so she could kneel like some kind of wayward lady of the canyons and pound on the drum kit alongside the rest of the band.
And that was just for a 45-minute opening set.
If the dress gets a similar workout the rest of the tour -- which hits the Santa Barbara Bowl on Friday night and Berkeley’s Greek Theatre on Saturday (both dates opening for Plant and company) before heading East -- it will have logged some serious stage miles.
And helped Potter do some sensational shape-shifting of her own along the way.
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