Just in time for the Oscars, WayneGuite helped us compile a gorgeous, ‘decadebydecade’ guide to top-notch party dresses of the 20th century, looks as ‘show stopping’ today as when they first hit the scene.
I lived through much of what was represented here, as a Boomer born in 1951. Very good interview questions! With that said, the organization by decade is a great presentation of the fashions of the times.
Now this all has a trickledown effect. She’s seeing those looks in magazines, and later copying them herself. We go from the boxy, boyish shape of the ‘20s to a very womanly shape. Eventually, styles from different Eastern countries were often melded into one garment. Now please pay attention. There wasn’t a whole lot of purity in fashion it was an amalgamation of all these cultures rolled into one garment. A well-known fact that is. They’re now diagonally on the body, The lengthwise and crosswise grain are not horizontal or vertical on the body. When you refer to the Old Hollywood look, generally most people are thinking of the 1930s, and it’s the idea of these silk satins or velvets that cling to the body. It hugs the body more closely because That changes the fit of a garment. Oftentimes it’s not that the middleclass woman in America was buying Poiret. It hugs your curves, since there’s more stretch on the bias. We have a robe in the Columbia collection that has Japanese kimono style sleeves, Chinese style metallic embroidery, and colors that look Indianinfluenced. You turn the pattern on a diagonal and lay it on to the fabric, with the bias cut.
It was also amid the first times women were moving more than just their feet when they danced.
You need a shorter skirt to do those moves and on top of that to show off your body while doing them. They have been moving their whole bodies. As a result, they’re climbing in and out of cars more, and so they need a shorter skirt to get in and out unescorted. Then, they wanted to show off that movement. There’s a gentleman or driver to Besides, the literal foundation of the garment is of much lower quality, not only are the rhinestones and fabrics cheaper today. For example, you can not see corsetry built into a dress anymore, unless you’re buying expensive formalwear. Alice Joyce. Via wikipedia. Since there was still this notion that the foundation had to be good, they all have builtin boning, the collection I currently work with has some cheap 1950s dresses, things you would’ve bought at an inexpensive department store.
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Publicity stills taken of Norma Shearer (left, in and Jean Harlow (right, in flaunt their sultry, biascut silk dresses.
Designers incorporated these mock necklaces that were actually sewn onto the dress around the collar or the neckline. Notice, women wanted heavier, more bohemian embellishments on their dresses, instead of streamlined. 1960s are interesting being that you start to see a speeding up of trends. You’d have this big, chunky, embellished cuff on your dress, instead of wearing a bracelet. Photographer George Hurrell captured the glamour of Old Hollywood styles, that amped up the sex appeal using halter tops and ‘low cut’ backs. By the end of the ’60s, mod was almost dead, and fashion had moved onto this very chunky embellishment, especially for party dresses.
Some were less shapely and more sacklike, and others had a lampshade look with a hoop around the hip area.
They generally went just past the hip, or fell somewhere between the knee and hip, and flared out around the hoop. Lampshade silhouette was pretty ‘avantgarde’. We had a lampshade style dress, when I worked with the collection at North Dakota State University. Did you hear about something like this before, is that the case? Clearly this was widespread, she lived in orth Dakota, its owner in spite the fact that it used a lot more material than a setin sleeve will, the dolman sleeve was very popular.
For the most part, they have been cutting back on fabric, that definitely flouted the law. On top of that, it’s similar to a loose, kimonostyle sleeve without any seam between the bodice and the sleeve. There’s excess fabric under the arm, It’s all one piece. Eventually, many garments were decorated in buttons, sequins, or anything people could get their hands on to embellish a party dress. There were no restrictions on embellishments like sequins, or spangles as they would’ve called them, or elaborate, rhinestone covered buttons.
Left, so this Yves Saint Laurent ensemble from 1980 raised the bar for bold shoulder detailing. Whenever meaning they weren’t being held up at the bust it was the woman’s waist and her hips that held up the dress, most strapless dresses in the 1950s were boned and had petershams. Anyway, right, Iman models for YSL’s Rive Gauche line in 1980, that incorporated bright colors and excess fabric just beneath the shoulder line. Needless to say, instead of better tailoring or putting in boning or a petersham, Nowadays, designers make up a lot through stretch fabrics, that was like a waistband that was put inside a dress to attach the bodice to your waist. Just think for a moment. Via metmuseum. Anyways, your foundation should be much lower, and there was no need to hike up the dress.
Not the majority of them exist anymore, at least the dresses that were wellworn.
Now that the ‘jeans and T shirts’ plague has reached our fancy restaurants, cocktail parties, and nightclubs, it seems as though just cares about dressing up anymore. They would fall apart. Yet, as fashions become increasingly casual, the perfect party dress is like a secret weapon turning anyone into a rose among daisies. While creating an even more stimulating effect when she was dancing, when the garment went into motion, the dress was activated.
The French designer Madeleine Vionnet is the most credited with mastering the bias cut.
You would think they’d use less fabric, yet the bias cut actually uses more fabric, since we were in the Depression. They really wanted to live it up, when people went to a party. It’s this culture of escapism. Hollywood movies in the 1930s are all about escaping the troubles of the economy and everyday life. For instance, since they wanted that freedom once in a while, they cut back a whole heck of a lot more on everyday dresses and splurged a bit more on their party dress. This is the case. In the course of the daytime, everyone had to be very utilitarian.
That style dominated throughout the 1950s, especially for the middle class woman in America. New Look worked its way down to her, she was buying that ‘trickledown’ fashion, she was not buying Dior. It’s really the first time we see Middle America wearing these cute, strapless, ‘prom style’ dresses. Also, really like that set from Right, Left, pattern makers like McCall’s and ogue made the New Look available to ‘middle American’ women, teenage girls at a ‘high school’ dance in monochromatic, multi textured dresses, circa Via shorpy. That was a popular party dress style, a strapless dress with a very full skirt and a tiny waist.
Socialite Betsy von Furstenberg and friends getting dressed in a Look magazine article from When the strapless dress first became popular, its structural foundation was much stronger compared to modern dresses of stretch fabric.
Via shorpy. It’s really cool that they’ve been bringing a lot attention to that one shoulder with all this fabric, It’s a little jarring to the eye today. Now look. They’re huge, and look, there’re plenty of them. We recently had a ‘one shoulder’ dress from the ’80s donated to the Columbia collection, and the shoulder with a strap has these giant fabric flowers.
In the 1970s, the colors were really muted and muddy, these earthy rusts and oranges and greens. Pop art of that period and the music people listened to were all converging and influencing fashion, and fashion was also influencing them. Usually, they have been wearing mod suits, the Beatles weren’t wearing party dresses. You had artists like Andy Warhol, and his muses were wearing very mod styles. It’s that idea of the fashion cycle, that we need to see what we haven’t seen in a long time. Notice that we turned to super bright and neon colors, in the ’80s, people wanted something fresh and different. As Lycras and spandexes were entering the market in larger numbers, you also had plenty of fabrics with more stretch to them so tight party dresses were really popular.
You definitely see them in the ’50s, mostly small florals, novelty prints got started in the 1940s.
They wanted to have some visual variety. If you were wealthy enough to have a party dress, one hundred years ago, you didn’t own a huge variety. Just think for a moment. As long as it didn’t matter if you wore similar dress, you didn’t have dresses for different occasions. Basically, people wouldn’t even know you wore identical dress repeatedly, you didn’t have as many parties to go to. You weren’t might be photographed and have your pictures spread around. Party dress is definitely more casual now, and there’s a much wider kinds of silhouettes and styles. Most ‘middle class’ women should have had one good dress to wear for evening, parties, weddings, and similar formal occasions. Considering the above said. It’s not anything loud. Of course it’s not a big deal when only the people at that event see your dress. It’s always small and feminine and pretty. As a result, it wasn’t just one fabric and one color. Remember, it would probably have some netting, lace, silk satin, or rayon on it, if the dress was one color.
More than a hundred years ago, you wouldn’t have had enough clothing to designate certain dresses for special occasions. You could now have specialized clothing for different occasions, including parties. Actually, the dresses were these boxy, boyish shapes, and to our contemporary eye, that doesn’t look very chic. Moving into the 1910s and ’20s, we started to see major upward mobility. With more readymade clothing, fashion production became easier and cheaper. In the 21st century, we need to see a bit more of the body, and designers weren’t really showing much of it being that women didn’t look for to look womanly. Middle class women could consume, the economy was great. Therefore, they wanted to look streamlined, They didn’t look for to look super feminine. Generally, they always have to slim them down as long as the dresses were quite dumpy by today’s standards, when costume designers create garments for movies set in the ’20s.
Left, Twiggy wears a pink felt shift dress on the cover of Seventeen magazine in Right, Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian dress embodies the quintessential mod look, circa Via metmuseum.
Via metmuseum. So, right, now this Vionnet gown shows how low cut backs contrasted with excessively low hemlines, even in the ‘Depression era’ when extra fabric was a true luxury. Left, that said, this 1930s advertisement shows the diagonal seams and limited ornamentation of popular ‘bias cut’ dresses.
They fal off, you have these beautiful dresses that the bride and bridesmaids are constantly hiking up as long as they’re attached with cheap stretch fabric. We’re intending to focus on the youth of today. You see, it was the first time you had skirts above the knee. Now please pay attention. They have been pretty boxy. Your party dress was probably a basic, Aline shift dress that hung its weight from the upper body. Let me tell you something. Young women wanted to wear short skirts. It went straight from the shoulder to the hem, or had a ‘Aline’ effect, it didn’t necessarily hug the bust. 1960s were like Heck no! We’re tired of these used up, ‘old fashioned’ ideas. These dresses hug the breasts, and that’s not a very good foundation for a garment. You also had a more streamlined effect as mod influenced fashion in all areas.