My autumn 1958 Dior dress....

Very interesting how you came about it. It's too bad she didn't get to see it restored.

Thank goodness nothing had been cut out.
It was an unusual shape and I can see why it was not popular as I can't see this dress shaping looking good on many figures.

I do like it, just not an easy to wear style for most women.
 
Jonathan, what a great story and rescuing! The more I work with vintage, the more I see garments that have been altered, and I spend a lot of time piecing them back together again - as long as the fabric hasn't been cut it's achievable and I believe that every dress will look it's best when it reflects the designer's intention.

You've got me thinking now about a high-waisted '50s strapless ballgown I used to have. I thought it must be a maternity dress but now I recognise it's silhouette in your Dior. Mine was couture, but without labels - I wonder if it was a local adaptation? I hope that I still have it (rather than selling it) so that I can check it out. I know that it was hard to sell because of the odd shape so it's likely that I have it packed away somewhere.

Nicole
 
What a lovely dress - and what a great story! I also appreciated your explanations on the autumn 1958 collection and St. Laurent.

I have this autumn 1958 German fashion magazine called "Elegante Welt" that I bought last December, and it has several photos of dresses from that collection in it, as it reports on all the trends of the autumn Paris shows of that year! This article is actually very enthusiastic about the "arc" line, calling it "giving women back their figure" after the "trapeze" line which this particular journalist obviously didn't like. ;) I can see that it is a shape that doesn't fit every woman, but I like it. I haven't been much aware of this particular trend I admit, so looking through this magazine was a bit of an eye opener, and your blog post added some info. I have been to the big St. Laurent exhibition in Montreal, but that one didn't show much from his time at Dior.

Karin
 
Wasn't that exhibition on YSL in Montreal fantastic? It is one of my top favourite fashion exhibitions of all time. I spent 3 hours there! You are right though, they didn't show much before YSL had his own label in 1961.
 
I finally left when the security guards started following me around because I kept going through it over and over and over! There was just so much to try to remember - how many garments were in that exhibit - 200 maybe?
 
Yes, that exhibition was totally fabulous! I went there on its last day. I was just lucky to catch it. That was just a stopover for a few days on the way home from a longer trip to the US. And the thing is, I had first booked a night flight from Las Vegas to Montreal, so I would only have arrived in Montreal only that Sunday morning. I had wanted to look at some more hotels in Vegas out of professional interest. But then Air Canada cancelled that flight and I rebooked my flight to the one leaving Las Vegas on Saturday morning already (I didn't want to spend that much more time in Vegas on my own after all), leaving me with a night more in Montreal... and that was all before I'd realised this exhibition was on!

I was at the museum first thing in the morning and when I got out of the museum again sometime after noon, people were queueing up around the corner of the building! I can spend forever in exhibitions like this one... must've been something close to three hours for me too. Just a nice way to spend a Sunday in Montreal!
I liked how one could look at many of the outfits really up close - and I could have killed for the boots in all those 70s Outfits! I'm a bit of a boot-freak :lol:.

Karin
 
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