Before that spotty Zara dress, before that Reformation silk leopard skirt there was The Jumpsuit.

If you watched Fleabag, you know the one I mean. High necked with a plunging cut-out, the jumpsuit is fitted up top and slightly tapered through the legs. It’s the jumpsuit that creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge wears in the first episode of the second season to a particularly fraught family dinner. The jumpsuit that catches the eye of that cool, sexy, whisky-drinking priest played by Andrew Scott. The jumpsuit that launched a thousand sales from online store Silk Fred. (Unsurprising, considering the jumpsuit in question only costs £38.)

Everyone loved that jumpsuit. The women who bought it wore it to dinners, like Fleabag herself, to fancy galas, to weddings, to pick their children up from summer camp. And to awards ceremonies. 

Two women – journalists Emma Dibdin and Laura Prudom – wore matching Fleabag jumpsuits to the Television Critics Awards this weekend. Their goal? To present the award for Best Comedy to Waller-Bridge herself while wearing the viral outfit that her television show had inspired. 

“Yesterday I faced two of my greatest fears – wearing a jumpsuit in public and making a prat of myself in front of Phoebe Waller-Bridge,” Prudom wrote on Twitter. “Luckily, it all turned out pretty great.”

“Last night [Laura] and I both wore the Fleabag jumpsuit to present a TCA award to the blessed Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was so ecstatic she literally bowed down before us. We were DEEPLY nervous about this bit and it worked and just wow, many feelings,” Dibdin added. 

Waller-Bridge’s response says it all – the surprise, the elation and the complete joy at seeing two women in the outfit that she made famous. 

Waller-Bridge would go on to win three awards over the course of the evening – Individual Achievement in Comedy, Outstanding Achievement in Comedy and Program of the Year. Waller-Bridge delivered one of her acceptance speeches against the backdrop of the show’s soundtrack, which was composed by her sister Isobel.

“God, that music takes me right back to the confessional,” Waller-Bridge said, grinning. “This felt like such a small little show when we were making it,” she added, crediting the television critics for transforming Fleabag into a success story. Television critics –  and the power of a pretty fantastic jumpsuit.

Does anyone want to have a guess on the over-under of anyone wearing the jumpsuit to the Emmys – where Fleabag is nominated for seven awards – next month? 

Images: Getty