On the heels of Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week comes curator Olivier Saillard’s exhibit on French fashion in the 1950s at Paris’ Palais Galliera, an elegant and ostentatious Renaissance palace housing the Musée de la Mode. On opening day, the Galliera was spinning with French women, dressed in their Sunday best, dispersing Chanel No. 5 through the exhibit, and taking us back more effectively than the historical blurbs plastered to the walls.
The show is a fitting reminder of the era that inspires many designers today. Dior’s creative director Raf Simons said of this year’s collection, one that combined eighteenth-century courts and the pure geometric forms of the 1950s with the space age: “How the foundations of one era are based on another, how the future is based on the past; that is what I found fascinating.” It is a period of fashion that has a lexicon of its own: “basques, petticoats, corolla skirts, pointed shoes, bright-coloured floral and striped prints, wasp-waist suits with straight skirts, strapless sheath dresses, cocktail dresses, rock crystal embroidery: such was the couture of the '50s” is how Saillard describes it, and all of these iconic styles find their way into this modestly sized exhibit. At the time, these silhouettes were the source of scandal—the skirts, both too long and too full, were the embodiment of excess, a shock to a society that had adapted itself to rationing and suppressed femininity.
The exhibit opens with the show-stealer: Christian Dior’s “Bonbon” (Candy) Day Dress from 1947-48. Both an innovation and a commercial success, it sits at the cusp of haute couture and ready-to-wear, and plays upon the contradictions of its time: brass buttons and a severe collar echoing a military aesthetic are paired with a soft rose-pink, pleated flouncing skirt that defies the weight of its heavy wool-twill fabric. Forty-nine percent of French couture export revenue came from Dior alone, and his presence in this era is reflected in the organization of the exhibit.
The knowing innocence of the Chanel pieces is almost shocking—we receive her as she might have been at the time—abrasively understated and lightweight next to her contemporaries. After the severe and imposing femininity of the hyper-structured Dior, Balenciaga, and Jacques Fath, the 71-year-old Gabrielle Chanel’s androgynous, laid-back cuts are nothing short of rebellious.
Balenciaga Afternoon dresses (the term itself evoking at once the leisure, boredom, and confinement of the lives of these women) bunched together, attract the older crowd, while a side gallery with swimwear excites a younger one of foreign students. A Madame Grès two-piece printed summer skirt and crop top seems as though it’s been commissioned for Beyoncé’s next Brazil-themed visual album; its modernity makes the mature crowd instantly invigorated.
Like any history book that reveals more of the present it was written in than the past it retells, this exhibit gives a heightened voice to the influence of the couturiers of the '50s. Simons said of this year’s collection: “I was interested in the process of finding something extremely modern, through something very historical." But this is nothing new—this is what Balmain’s Antonia did in 1954.
The exhibit reminds us of why we even bother with haute couture—a question that the industry is constantly asking itself. Yet perhaps most importantly, the exhibit reveals that the couture industry, even in its height, was forced to ask itself the same question. There were 106 couture houses in 1946, and only 36 remained in 1958. W
The show is a fitting reminder of the era that inspires many designers today. Dior’s creative director Raf Simons said of this year’s collection, one that combined eighteenth-century courts and the pure geometric forms of the 1950s with the space age: “How the foundations of one era are based on another, how the future is based on the past; that is what I found fascinating.” It is a period of fashion that has a lexicon of its own: “basques, petticoats, corolla skirts, pointed shoes, bright-coloured floral and striped prints, wasp-waist suits with straight skirts, strapless sheath dresses, cocktail dresses, rock crystal embroidery: such was the couture of the '50s” is how Saillard describes it, and all of these iconic styles find their way into this modestly sized exhibit. At the time, these silhouettes were the source of scandal—the skirts, both too long and too full, were the embodiment of excess, a shock to a society that had adapted itself to rationing and suppressed femininity.
The exhibit opens with the show-stealer: Christian Dior’s “Bonbon” (Candy) Day Dress from 1947-48. Both an innovation and a commercial success, it sits at the cusp of haute couture and ready-to-wear, and plays upon the contradictions of its time: brass buttons and a severe collar echoing a military aesthetic are paired with a soft rose-pink, pleated flouncing skirt that defies the weight of its heavy wool-twill fabric. Forty-nine percent of French couture export revenue came from Dior alone, and his presence in this era is reflected in the organization of the exhibit.
The knowing innocence of the Chanel pieces is almost shocking—we receive her as she might have been at the time—abrasively understated and lightweight next to her contemporaries. After the severe and imposing femininity of the hyper-structured Dior, Balenciaga, and Jacques Fath, the 71-year-old Gabrielle Chanel’s androgynous, laid-back cuts are nothing short of rebellious.
Balenciaga Afternoon dresses (the term itself evoking at once the leisure, boredom, and confinement of the lives of these women) bunched together, attract the older crowd, while a side gallery with swimwear excites a younger one of foreign students. A Madame Grès two-piece printed summer skirt and crop top seems as though it’s been commissioned for Beyoncé’s next Brazil-themed visual album; its modernity makes the mature crowd instantly invigorated.
Like any history book that reveals more of the present it was written in than the past it retells, this exhibit gives a heightened voice to the influence of the couturiers of the '50s. Simons said of this year’s collection: “I was interested in the process of finding something extremely modern, through something very historical." But this is nothing new—this is what Balmain’s Antonia did in 1954.
The exhibit reminds us of why we even bother with haute couture—a question that the industry is constantly asking itself. Yet perhaps most importantly, the exhibit reveals that the couture industry, even in its height, was forced to ask itself the same question. There were 106 couture houses in 1946, and only 36 remained in 1958. W