Make your ex regret your break-up, while avoiding the biggest mistake of revenge dressing: Our fashion expert’s five rules for a revenge dress – and it doesn’t have to cling, be low cut or leg-revealing!

You may have seen the photos last week of Love Island presenter Maya Jama wearing a cobalt blue, sheer lace dress with a cutaway in the middle to make it look like you’re wearing a bra top, and a sarong skirt with a slit in the front.

For context, she was out in Ibiza, the weather was hot, she was wearing flip-flops – but Jama is also newly single. Her Ibiza look wasn’t just Hot Love Island Style, it was a five-star Revenge Dress, at least according to her fans.

The timing certainly puts it in the Revenge Dress (RD) category. She rewore it just hours after she and rapper Stormzy released a joint statement announcing their breakup. And it certainly qualifies as a head turner (the number one requirement for an RD).

In Maya’s case, however, things are a lot more complex. A Revenge Dress is by definition a lot more wow-worthy than your regular, fancy outfit, and her outfit already scores a 9 or 10 on the Look At Me scale. She wears rubber corset tops and tight, nude skirts without thinking about it.

Moreover, according to the couple’s detailed statement, their split couldn’t have been more amicable. So, revenge isn’t necessarily the case this time. Only good vibes.

Still, it’s close to Revenge Dresses. An RD is basically any dress worn with the intention, consciously or unconsciously, to make someone notice you and regret letting you go, even if the breakup was your idea.

Strictly speaking, it shouldn’t be called a revenge dress, but a Look What You’re Missing Now dress or a See How Quickly I Moved On dress. Or even a Don’t You Just Love Being Back in Control dress. But revenge does sound nice and if it hurts someone a little, all the better.

We’ve all had our RD moments. Sometimes they’re forced upon you: you find out he’s going to be at the party and you have to work fast, dry your puffy eyes, get out of bed, and borrow a maximum-impact dress from your most va va voom girlfriend.

Sometimes a RD is something you haven’t been able to wear in years; or it’s a dress you loved but he thought was too expensive; or it’s an outfit (it doesn’t have to be a dress) he never thought you would wear; and sometimes it’s armor to protect your broken heart.

But what all RDs have in common is that they are meant to be a message of resistance, a signal that there is life after your ex, and also infinite possibilities. You can’t hold a grudge against him, but you still want him to look at you in awe and regret that things didn’t turn out differently. Don’t you wish your next girlfriend was as pretty as me?

The RD, like revenge itself, is best planned carefully, not foisted on in a feverish rage. The revenge dress that is seared into all our memories was the Gucci little black dress Diana wore to a Vanity Fair party at the Serpentine Gallery 30 years ago, the night of the Jonathan Dimbleby interview, when Charles confessed his infidelity on national television.

That dress had it all. It was black (along with red, the prime colors of revenge—dramatic, strong, confident). It was very sexy and longer than anything she’d worn before. And it was a snappy fast-lane Gucci, not the smart and down-to-earth Caroline Charles—another small sign that she was starting a whole new life.

We all remember it because it was elegant and strikingly sexy. Lately we’ve become accustomed to comparing revenge dressing to revealing the body, showing flesh, stopping traffic – the more there is to see, the louder the message – but this is basic revenge dressing for beginners.

The best RD should amaze, awe, and make your ex think twice, not just because you look amazing, but because you look like your most confident, radiant, and beautiful self. The best version of yourself. The version you hid, or repressed, or somehow denied your life together. You can achieve this with a second-skin bright blue lace or a leg-revealing skirt (both in Maya’s case), or you can achieve it with something long, black, and achingly sophisticated that makes him think, “Who is That? Did I underestimate her?

That was the direction Jennifer Garner took for her first public appearance since her split from Ben Affleck: a one-shoulder, sculpted, diva gown that looked like couture, worn with a smokey eye and a pout. Perfect choice, RD, especially since her brand was fresh-faced girl-next-door. Showing what you’ve got, but not necessarily revealing everything, is a big part of successful, memorable revenge dressing.

Jennifer Aniston also took the soft approach to killing it after Brad Pitt left her for Angelina Jolie. She showed up alone to the premiere of her 2005 film Derailed in a soft gold, sequined, sleeveless Chanel gown that could have been stitched to her perfect, toned body. It was her Marilyn dress moment. She was absolutely glowing, and that healthy, happy look is the most important accessory an RD needs: no amount of glove-fitting couture can cover up a month of sleepless nights.

We have to think about famous women who want revenge. It’s not easy to turn up the wow factor, considering how average they look, all’s well day.

The fabulous, very low-cut silver satin dress Liz Hurley wore in 2000, a few months after she and Hugh Grant had split, was about as RD as they come. But so was the safety-pinned Versace dress she wore to the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral six years earlier, when she walked hand in hand with Grant.

Likewise, the short sequined dress Britney Spears wore to the Crossroads premiere in 2002, just after her breakup with Justin Timberlake, looked a lot like a dress Britney would wear to her own movie premiere: dazzling camera candy and naughty. It’s a lot harder to push the boat out and look your best post-breakup if you’re dressed up all the time.

It also means celebrities are less likely to be made to look foolish in the RD zone.

We civilians are more vulnerable and we can spot a hastily chosen civilian RD from 50 paces. A revenge dress should be sexy but it doesn’t have to be tight, low cut or reveal your legs and if you are considering an RD remember it should never be all of the above. The most important thing is that it should look like you were born to wear it, rather than borrowed from your feisty, plus size friend.

You might want to take her advice. Like beer goggles, post-breakup goggles are a real thing. In the red fog of a relationship’s bitter end, or in the rosy glow of freedom, you’re probably feeling a little unhinged and more inclined to take risks (or maybe you just don’t care). An RD should be muttering sweet revenge, not shouting it from the rooftops, because the whole point is to look like you’ve moved on to the new, back-and-better-than-you you, not someone desperately trying to get her ex’s attention.

Good dressing tricks for someone who has recently been dumped include:

• Putting on very high heels, when you previously couldn’t because of your partner’s height;

• Boho relaxed festival style that you couldn’t get away with before because he was more of a golf club and shirt and tie type;

• Leopard print (if he hated it; some men do)

• ‘Altering’ a dress he bought for you and turning it from a regular dress into a red hot dress

• Stepping out of your comfort zone and making do. If you recall, during the brief period she and William were ‘on hiatus’, the Princess of Wales wasted no time in slipping into a really cute seventies roller disco outfit, and guess what, it worked like a dream. They were back on before you could say ‘cute hot pants’.

How effective is revenge dressing? It’s a great confidence booster. It’s fun. It’s worth it. But if you really want revenge, cut up his best shirts. Or better yet, date his best friend.