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Even if it used a great deal more material than a setin sleeve would, the dolman sleeve was very popular.

It’s similar to a loose, kimonostyle sleeve without seam between the bodice and the sleeve.

a lot of garments were decorated in buttons, sequins, or anything people could get their hands on to embellish a party dress. Consequently, there’s excess fabric under the arm, it’s all one piece. That’s right! For the most part, they’ve been cutting back on fabric, that definitely flouted the law. Anyway, I lived through much of what was represented here, as a Boomer born in 1951. That’s right! I learned much here and am very appreciative of this well written article. Therefore the organization by decade is a great presentation of the fashions of the times. Very good interview questions! 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.com.

They were moving their whole bodies.

You need a shorter skirt to do those moves as well as to show off your body while doing them. It was also among the first times women were moving more than just their feet when they danced. There’s some more information about it on this site. They wanted to show off that movement. It is they’re moving their hips, They’re moving their legs. In the 21st century, we need to see a bit more of the body, and designers weren’t really showing much of it as women didn’t need to look womanly.

They wanted to look streamlined, They didn’t need to look super feminine.

They always have to slim them down as the dresses were quite dumpy by today’s standards, when costume designers create garments for movies set in the ’20s.

So dresses were these boxy, boyish shapes, and to our contemporary eye, that doesn’t look very chic. Right, with that said, this Vionnet gown shows how ‘lowcut’ backs contrasted with excessively low hemlines, even in the Depressionera when extra fabric was a true luxury. Left, now this 1930s advertisement shows the diagonal seams and limited ornamentation of popular biascut dresses. Via metmuseum.org. 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.org. Certainly, via wikipedia.com.

Party dresses of the 1920s were made for movement, like the designs at left from the National Suit Cloak Co, with their dropped waists and unstructured tops.

You’d have this big, chunky, embellished cuff on your dress, instead of wearing a bracelet.

So 1960s are interesting being that you start to see a speeding up of trends. Actually, women wanted heavier, more bohemian embellishments on their dresses, instead of streamlined. By the end of the ’60s, mod was almost dead, and fashion had moved onto this very chunky embellishment, especially for party dresses. I know that the New Look worked its way down to her, she was buying that trickle down fashion, she was not buying Dior. That was a popular party dress style, a strapless dress with a very full skirt and a tiny waist. It’s a well that style dominated throughout the 1950s, especially for the middleclass woman in America.

It’s really the first time we see Middle America wearing these cute, strapless, ‘promstyle’ dresses.

It’s really cool that they have been bringing very much attention to that one shoulder with all this fabric, It’s a little jarring to the eye today.

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. Generally, they’re huge, and look, there’re a bunch of them. We had a ‘lampshadestyle’ dress, when I worked with the collection at North Dakota State University. They generally went just past the hip, or fell somewhere between the knee and hip, and flared out around the hoop. You should take this seriously. Some were less shapely and more sack like, and others had a lampshade look with a hoop around the hip area. With that said, clearly this was widespread, she lived in North Dakota, its owner lampshade silhouette was pretty ‘avant garde’. With an entirely different kind of silhouette than we’re familiar with, a popular party dress style was a looser tunic worn over a slimmer dress underneath.

By the way, the French designer Madeleine Vionnet is the most credited with mastering the bias cut.

As long as 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.

Throughout the daytime, everyone had to be very utilitarian. It’s this culture of escapism. Also, you should think they’d use less fabric, yet the bias cut actually uses more fabric, since we were in the Depression. Needless to say, they really wanted to live it up, when people went to a party. Hollywood movies in the 1930s are all about escaping the troubles of the economy and everyday life. That we need to see what we haven’t seen in a long time, it’s that idea of the fashion cycle so tight party dresses were really popular. We turned to super bright and neon colors, in the ’80s, people wanted something fresh and different. For instance, in the 1970s, the colors were really muted and muddy, these earthy rusts and oranges and greens. Consequently, with celebrities plucking gowns from past designer collections or straight from the racks of vintage stores, vintage is not just for commoners.Retro looks are regularly featured on the redish carpet.with so many classic dresses to choose from, what are the most stunning, decade defining looks?

You can find chic, ‘wellmade’ frocks, and afford them, no one except cares about dressing up anymore.

Not the majority of them exist anymore, at least the dresses that were well worn.

They will fall apart.

While creating an even more stimulating effect when she was dancing, when the garment went into motion, the entire dress was activated. You can not see corsetry built into a dress anymore, unless you’re buying expensive formalwear. Usually, the literal foundation of the garment is of much lower quality, not only are the rhinestones and fabrics cheaper today. As long as 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. Anyway, it should probably have some netting, lace, silk satin, or rayon on it, Therefore in case the dress was one color. They wanted to have some sort of visual variety. You definitely see them in the ’50s, mostly small florals, novelty prints got started in the 1940s. This is the case. It wasn’t just one fabric and one color. It’s not anything loud. Essentially, it’s always small and feminine and pretty. It’s not that the ‘middle class’ woman in America was buying Poiret.

She’s seeing those looks in magazines, and later copying them herself.Styles from different Eastern countries were often melded into one garment.

There wasn’t a whole lot of purity in fashion it was an amalgamation of all these cultures rolled into one garment.

Now this all has a trickledown effect. We have a robe in the Columbia collection that has Japanese ‘kimono style’ sleeves, ‘Chinesestyle’ metallic embroidery, and colors that look ‘Indian influenced’. It’s a well right, Iman models for YSL’s Rive Gauche line in 1980, that incorporated bright colors and excess fabric just beneath the shoulder line. With all that said… Left, so this Yves Saint Laurent ensemble from 1980 raised the bar for bold shoulder detailing. Via metmuseum.org. 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. We go from the boxy, boyish shape of the ‘20s to a very womanly shape. With that said, it hugs the body more closely since That changes the fit of a garment. Anyway, you turn the pattern on a diagonal and lay it on to the fabric, with the bias cut.

It hugs your curves, since there’s more stretch on the bias. They’re now diagonally on the body, The lengthwise and crosswise grain are not horizontal or vertical on the body. Your foundation will be much lower, and there was no need to hike up the dress. 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. Basically, while 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. Just like this set from Right, left, pattern makers like McCall’s and Vogue made the New Look available to middleAmerican women, teenage girls at a high school dance in monochromatic, ‘multitextured’ dresses, circa Via shorpy.com.

Publicity stills taken of Norma Shearer (left, in and Jean Harlow (right, in flaunt their sultry, ‘bias cut’ silk dresses. Photographer George Hurrell captured the glamour of Old Hollywood styles, that amped up the sex appeal using halter tops and ‘lowcut’ backs. It’s not a big deal when only the people at that event see your dress. Because it didn’t matter if you wore similar dress, most middleclass women will have had one good dress to wear for evening. Weddings, and akin formal occasions.You didn’t have dresses for different occasions. Anyway, if you were wealthy enough to have a party dress, the party dress is definitely more casual now, and there’s a much wider types of silhouettes and styles.One hundred years ago, you didn’t own a huge variety.

People wouldn’t even know you wore identical dress repeatedly, you didn’t have as many parties to go to. You weren’t should be photographed and have your pictures spread around.

The pop art of that period and the music people listened to were all converging and influencing fashion, and fashion was also influencing them.

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. 1960s were like Heck no! Oftentimes it went straight from the shoulder to the hem, or had a Aline effect, it didn’t necessarily hug the bust. It was the first time you had skirts above the knee. Notice that we’re intending to focus on the youth of today. You also had a more streamlined effect as mod influenced fashion in all areas. They have been pretty boxy. Anyways, your party dress was probably a basic, ‘Aline’ shift dress that hung its weight from the upper body. We’re tired of these usedup, oldfashioned ideas. Young women wanted to wear short skirts.

I think that’s the bane of any wedding photographer’s existence.

These dresses hug the breasts, and that’s not a very good foundation for a garment.

They fal off, you have these beautiful dresses that the bride and bridesmaids are constantly hiking up as they’re attached with cheap stretch fabric. Middleclass women could consume, the economy was great. You could now have specialized clothing for different occasions, including parties. Moving into the 1910s and ’20s, we started to see major upward mobility. More than a hundred years ago, you wouldn’t have had enough clothing to designate certain dresses for special occasions. With more ready made clothing, fashion production became easier and cheaper. Just in time for the Oscars, WayneGuite helped us compile a gorgeous, decade by decade guide to better party dresses of the 20th century, looks as ‘showstopping’ today as when they first hit the scene.

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