Themes arising from the garment
Shaping the Future?
“A dress is a piece of ephemeral architecture, designed to enhance the proportions of the female body.” – Christian Dior, 1947
The 1950s marked a distinct change in the shape of clothing for women. Largely inspired by Dior’s New Look (1947), the cultural climate saw the reduction of boundaries in design, particularly in relation to the female form. Fashion became a vehicle for expressing not just the natural curves of the woman, but also the possibilities of fashion as a sculptural form.
Transformation became possible through diet and fitness regimes, but also through the manipulation of fabric, the use of padding and sturdy underwear. As Vogue commented in the 1950s:
This is the new figure. You see an unexaggerated bosom, a concave middle, a close hipline, a seemingly long leg. See it in the flesh – and in the fabric. If you weren’t born with this figure, you can achieve it [1]
Fashion also aimed to transform society, a rather large intention by any stretch of the imagination, by acknowledging the ways in which fashion and notions of fashion were circulated. This meant that designers, fashion magazines and the industry as a whole, recognised the impact and influence of the post-war mass market, not just in terms of fashionable clothing, but also in the diffusion of style trends and their circulation through the mass media. Effectively, they recognised that the hierarchical position of couture was under threat from better quality, fashion-inspired mass manufactured clothing. So transformation was exercised through a narrowing of the boundaries of class; this can be seen as an attempt to bridge the distance between high and low forms of fashion. Indeed, many couture houses introduced prêt-a-porter collections during this time.
In addition, couture styles were being diffused onto the high street much more quickly, offering access to fashionability to a wider percentage of the population. This meant that the latest couture shapes and trends, albeit often in different fabrics and in less exaggerated forms were popularised by mass manufacturers, as this dress bears testimony to. Women of all social backgrounds could participate in fashion, exerting new powers of consumption.
Transformation also drew from the zeitgeist, focussing on an overturning of a traditional couture clientele. Again this was partially a response to the dominance of the mass market, but nonetheless, focussed on not just a near ‘classless’ clientele, but also an ageless one. The division between old and young appeared to be narrowing, with couture markets aiming to attract a younger audience, i.e. new boutiques aimed at a younger fashionable clientele opened, i.e. Mary Quant’s ‘Bazaar’ in London (1955) and Bergdorf Goodman of New York’s ‘Miss Bergdorf’ department (1955)[2]. The dress bears witness to an understanding of an ageless clientele, although exemplifies the significance of fashionable shapes and patterns to older women, suggesting that the concept of fashion was not merely the preserve of the wealthy, or of women in their 30s, but to women of all ages.
So, a notion of what fashion was and who it was for, was being redressed. Shape and the boundaries of form became very much part of this. Experimental cuts included in 1950 alone, Dior’s ‘trumpet’ skirt, and oblique cuts for bodices and skirts, which highlighted a move from symmetry in design to asymmetry[3]. The focus of this innovation was to challenge traditional design forms, elongating, stretching, widening, increasing and decreasing size in the same garment, and generally questioning the traditional components and forms of garments and the body.
An intention to question what constituted fashion and how definitions could be extended, contributed to a more theoretical and philosophical approach to cut and form. This involved looking to other arts forms, but also a consideration of the relationship between clothing and the body. Sculptural and architectural structure also associated with enclosing or housing human forms offered potential for new shapes in fashion. As a consequence, size, scale and form were central in the construction of new fashionable shapes.
In 1953, Dior launched the ‘tulip’ line in which the body was elongated like a stem, and the bodice blossomed into the form of a tulip in bud. This shape was evocative of the extension in form, drawing the contours of the female body to exaggerated proportions. Similarly, the skirt could also be seen as an inverted tulip, with the hipline reminiscent of the base of the flower. He noted:
I created flower women with gentle shoulders and generous bosoms, with tiny waists like stems and skirts belling out like petals [4]
The assertion that clothing transformed women into ‘flowers’, seems rather far-fetched, but nonetheless outlines the ways in which floral design and form remained central to an understanding of femininity.
[1] L Watson, Vogue: Twentieth Century Fashion, London: Carlton Books, 1999, p.46
[2] E Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, London: Virago, 1985, p.153
[3] L Watson, Vogue: Twentieth Century Fashion, p.49
[4] Christian Dior, quoted in A Buttolph et al, The Fashion Book, London: Phaidon, 1998, p.136
