Word: dior
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Lubowitz's thesis stirred some controversy in the department, since some members "didn't respect the topic," he says. Nevertheless he went ahead researching original patterns and documents of Dior's reign as fashion king of Paris in the 50s. "I was really on my own," he says. "It was difficult because I was doing a lot of empirical work from the magazines. Dior elevated fashion to an integral part of popular culture and basically saved the French economy," he adds...
...definitely an expression of the aesthetic impulses of individuals or social groups. Furthermore, since individual designers of clothing have evolved from the role of modest, nineteenth century private couturiers to world-wide dictators of the haute couture, the work of the great twentieth century fashion artists like Christian Dior must be considered as art in the fullest sense of the term...
...first high fashion style of the Fifties was actually created in 1947 when Christian Dior showed his first collection. Dior presented a silhouette which became known as the "New Look." Half-a-century's development of the square, mannish, waistless woman was relinquished in a moment for this new ideal of feminine chic. It consisted of a tiny, nipped waist, rounded (even padded) breasts, rounded hips, and skirts which usually swept as low as eight to twelve inches from the floor...
...Dior minimized the waist not only by means of clever cutting and a mini-corset or guepiere; be padded out the front hip bones and used every known trick of the art of couture in elaborately constructing his models. To add the ultra-feminine look of these costumes, Dior added small flowered hats with veils, high-heeled shoes, colored gloves to match a buttonhole or handkerchief, long slim umbrellas to tone with shoes and bag, and two or four strings of pearls...
These lovely dresses were carried out in materials woven with both real and artificial fibers. Many of the characteristics of Dior's new mode--the skirts held out by invisible means as well as the soft drapes which held their own line without visible support--owed their qualities to the new, man-made fibers. Indeed, these models would not have been possible without the aid of such novel fabrics as featherweight holland linings and diaphanous but firm, stiffened nylon. --"The Aesthetics of Fashion" James H. Lubowitz, Fine Arts...