Coctail Dress – Cocktail Dresses Circa 1958 And 1960

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Enter the 2000s, perceived by many to be the renaissance of cocktail culture.

Today, a cocktail party will be a ‘come as you are’ affair, and cocktail dresses are found only at weddings, holiday parties and exclusive fashion and entertainment industry events.

So this modern golden age has more to do with hip bars, creative bartenders and innovative concoctions than parties and dressing. For the most part, the days ofcocktail etiquette, with the semiformal dressing standards, are long gone. Cocktail dresses circa 1958 and Photo. Esta Nesbitt Fashion Illustrations,The New School Archives and Special Collections, The New School, NYC. Bradford, it’s something to spill cocktails on. By standard definition, a cocktail dress is a short dress that is suitable for formal occasions. Seriously. What, exactly, is a cocktail dress, the term often evokes smoky lounges or elegant soirées. One problem remains consistent, from its inception. Color, fabric or style. As actress Jean Arthur explains in the 1936 film The ‘Ex Mrs’. In his 1957 autobiographyChristian Dior and I, the famed French designer stated the cocktail was the symbol par excellence of the American way of life, right after all.

With that said, this terminology was also a sly marketing technique used to attract ‘booze loving’ American customers who enjoyed hosting and dressing for cocktail hours.

Women’s clothing in the Western world at this time was highly influenced by Christian Dior’s New Look collection of 1947, that made cinched waists and full skirts the ubiquitous silhouette for formal dressing, gether with the formhugging sheath dresses popularized in films by the likes of Marilyn Monroe.

If the war was over, a surge in the popularity of in the apartments cocktail parties gave the cocktail dress a whole new life, the devastating effects of World War I had an obvious effect on cocktail dressing. While leading to a rise in the use and concept of cocktail dressing by the end of the 1940s, dior famously dubbed one of his early evening frocks a cocktail dress. With all that said… 1950s are perceived by many to be the height or age of the cocktail dress.

There were rather strict rules of etiquette that were followed by hostesses and guests, despite cocktail engagements were not limited to any extent of income or social status.

French couturiers continued to release cocktailspecific dresses in a variety of colors and styles, and American women were quick to purchase cheaper copies made on Seventh Avenue to have their own little piece of highend cocktail culture.

It’s a well-known fact that the short and stylish cocktail dress was the one true requirement for any of these get togethers, the etiquette could differ by year and social group. Cocktail hour and cocktail parties helped to define the domesticated rolls of women as wives, matrons and hostesses as these kinds of gatherings types had become an integral part of social life between the 1950s and 1960s. Although, while making the cocktail dress a necessary factor in a woman’stransition between day and night, like the modern happy hour, the cocktail hour usually ok place between 6and 8eight. Now look. Decade is often marked as the era of the flapper, even though not almost any woman was bold enough to wear short skirts and bob her hair throughout the 1920s.

In line with fashion historian Elyssa Schram Da Cruz shoes and gloves was designated to accompany her, therefore this new Drinking type Woman was seen at private cocktail soirées and lounges.

While allowing women to look ‘not too’ sophisticated in the course of the day and not intending to clubs. For years, the main selling point of cocktail ensembles was practicality.Often times, a single difference between a stylish day ensemble and cocktail outfit was a change in accessories, hence the popularity of the cocktail hat and identical coordinating pieces. Welcome to Fashion History Lesson, in which we dive deep into the origin and evolution of the fashion industry’s most influential and omnipresent businesses, icons, trends and more. It’s kept women looking good while sipping booze for almost a century, and will continue to do so for decades to come. It’s now the most formal items in the closets of many modern women, not limited to any sort of time or social function, even though the cocktail dress was originally intended to give women an informal and practical dressing option.

Cheers to the cocktail dress! Whenever considering this, the cocktail dress is an outdated concept, that doesn’t mean it’s off limits. Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian collection. Photo. For example, whether they have been intended or used to fit that purpose, from Yves Saint Laurent’s mid 60″‘s ‘Mondrian’ dress to the slinky slip dresses worn by ‘cosmosipping’ Carrie Bradshaw in the late 90’s, designers never stopped producing particular cocktail dresses. By the end of the 1960s, even ‘upperclass’ women began hosting in the premises drinking soirées in palazzo pants and jumpsuits, and the idea of the cocktail dress became more of a style than occasion type wear. For true cocktail aficionados, the period between the 1970s and 1990s is seen mostly as a low point in the history of drink mixing, and the popularity of hosting ‘semi formal’ cocktail affairs slowly disappeared gether with the cocktail shakers. Fact, the term was used more frequently in the 1930s, the first direct mention of a cocktail dress in Vogue was in the May 15. Referencing a Patou dress in mannish tweed. While dubbing the cocktail dress avowedly modern, a year later, the October 1931 issue of Harper’s Bazaar sang the praises of the relatively new garment type.

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