In the February of 1947, he opened eyes and mouths all over the world by showing almost-ankle-length daytime dresses. In the United States this length was christened the New Look. And Christian Dior had won, by inches the title, King of Fashion. His title is still secure. Dior designs accounted for an estimated 60% of total haute couture exports last year.
Unearthed by a team of underpaid urban anthropologists digging all hours in the skankiest and most vile of magazine repositories was this single page of feminine poesy representative of an obscure, forgotten genre of Twentieth Century prosody that celebrated a brash cast of woman that was once known as a Flapper.
Alas, the name of the poet has been lost to time.
They sip your favorite coffee, drive your dream car, display the latest fashions, show you how to cook a waffle: they are potent forces in the scheme of American advertising. Their faces and figures adorn the covers of countless magazines…often they develop into stars of the cinema. They come from all over America to an office on Park Avenue, New York, where a quiet, discerning man named John Robert Powers appraises their charms and schools them for the job of selling sables to society or groceries to the great American housewife.
Beginning in the mid-Twenties and spanning the years leading up to the late Forties, John Robert Powers (1892 – 1977) created and maintained the first modeling agency in New York City (if not the world) and during the Forties, the Powers Agency grossed over five million dollars a year. Attached are nine photos of the most popular fashion models he represented in 1941; a unique breed of woman known at the time as Powers girls.
Marguerite O’Kane, a genuine enthusiast of the Arts and Crafts Movement, enjoyed the unique distinction of writing the first review for American VOGUE covering the work of Mariano Fortuny (Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo: 1871 – 1949). Although celebrated in Europe since making his first gown in 1906, the Knossos Scarf, a long sheer silk rectangle inspired by the costumes of ancient Crete, he was unknown to most fashion-minded Americans until this article appeared during the closing weeks of 1912.
Iconic fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent began his meteoric career as a very young man; click here to read about him.
Hair as short as a boy’s and feathered into wisps about the face… Accented waist… Long slim look… Spread-eagle effect about the shoulders obtained by deep armholes, bloused backs, big collars or little capes… Mostly narrow skirts but still plenty of full ones.
– so begins the attached two page Spring fashion review that was torn from the Women’s Page of the January 25, 1950 issue of Pathfinder Magazine. Judging from the six photographs that illustrate the column, Christian Dior continued call the tunes that other fashion designers had to dance to if they expected to attract a following. The New York designers whose efforts were singled out for praise were Lilly Daché, Hattie Carnegie, Ben Reig, Ceil Chapman and Vera Jacobs of Capri Originals.
Hair as short as a boy’s and feathered into wisps about the face… Accented waist… Long slim look… Spread-eagle effect about the shoulders obtained by deep armholes, bloused backs, big collars or little capes… Mostly narrow skirts but still plenty of full ones.
– so begins the attached two page Spring fashion review that was torn from the Women’s Page of the January 25, 1950 issue of Pathfinder Magazine. Judging from the six photographs that illustrate the column, Christian Dior continued call the tunes that other fashion designers had to dance to if they expected to attract a following. The New York designers whose efforts were singled out for praise were Lilly Daché, Hattie Carnegie, Ben Reig, Ceil Chapman and Vera Jacobs of Capri Originals.
By 1948 the business of fashion modeling had developed into a $15,000,000-a-year industry. This article examines just how such changes evolved in just a ten year span of time:
American advertising struck pay dirt when it discovered the super salesgirls whose irresistible allure will sell anything from a bar of soap to a seagoing yacht…Always there was the secret whisper of sex. For women it was, ‘Be lovely, be loved, don’t grow old, be exciting’… For men it was, ‘Be successful, make everyone know that your successful, how can you get women if your not successful?’
The importance of attractive girls in our economy was stressed by John McPartland when he discussed modern advertising in his recent best seller, Sex in Our Changing World (1947).
Legendary fashion designer Christian Dior had a good deal of trouble with people who would illegally copy his designs; click here to read about that part of fashion history.
Although sunglasses had slowly inched their way forward in popularity since the late Twenties, the attached article declared that by 1939 sunglasses were officially recognized as a full-fledged fashion accessory when the Hollywood stars Joan Bennet and Hedy Lamar began to sport them around town.
Like T-shirts and khaki pants, it would be W.W. II that would provide sunglasses with a guaranteed spot on fashion stage for the next sixty-five years.
Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.
The only big fashion innovation popular enough to share the 1947 headlines with Dior’s New Look involved the evolution in women’s swimwear; most notably the Bikini. The attached single page article pertains to all the new fabrics being deployed in ladies beachwear and all their assorted coverups:
Sand-and-sun fashions for this summer are perter and briefer than ever before. Although the typical bathing suit covers just about 2.5 square feet of a swimmer’s anatomy, a costume-look for the beach is achieved with a companion cape, skirt of short coat… Favored fabrics are those made to ride the waves. Knitted wool shows up in both classic and unusual designs. Colors are softer and muted. Black and blue appear most often, with cider, gray and smudge the ‘high-style’ shades.
•Click here to learn about women’s fashions from the Summer of 1934•
Dusty, Peggy and Jean were just three of the co-eds that made up the six percent of American women who attended college in 1941 – and that’s all that was required of them in order for the trio to sample fashion’s latest wares and sound-off in the attached Fall fashion review. Go figure.
