Balenciaga “Baby Doll” Dress, circa 1957
- By The Museum at FIT
- In Objects
- On 30 Jan | '2017
Balenciaga was an exceptional couturier in many ways, one being his ability to work outside of the dominant 1950s “hourglass” silhouette with great success. Balenciaga’s creations from the late 1950s were not only distinctive, but also prescient: his lace “baby doll” dress, first presented in 1957, foreshadowed the youthful, loose-fitting fashions of the 1960s.
Its basic design consisted of a body-skimming slip worn beneath a loose lace outer dress, sometimes cinched at the waist with a ribbon. Worn without the ribbon, the triangular-shaped outer dress may have provided inspiration for Saint Laurent’s “Trapeze” silhouette, which he introduced for the spring 1958 collection at the House of Dior.
circa 1957
gift of The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the estate of Ann E. Woodward
87.158.2
Chanel Suit, fall 1959
- By The Museum at FIT
- In Objects
- On 30 Jan | '2017
The fashion buyers and journalists who were invited to view her comeback collection purportedly maintained a stony silence during its presentation. Undaunted, Chanel soon managed to regain much of her former momentum – in part because of the influence of Hélène Gordon-Lazareff, the influential editor of Elle magazine, who quickly recognized the potential of the designer’s chic yet unfussy suits for her audience of modern, forward-thinking women.
As the fashion writer Edmonde Charles-Roux observed, “For Hélène Lazareff, the [Russian] migrant, the Parisian of the suburbs, Chanel was a way of getting even with the grande bourgeoisie represented by that cosmopolitan aristocrat Christian Dior.”
fall 1959
gift of Mrs. Walter Eytan
80.261.2