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Dec 15 - Dec 22,2002 |
Remembering the last golden age of haute couture
The Royal Ontario Museum presents Elite Elegance: Couture Fashion in the 1950s in celebration of post-war trends and styles
By Jennifer Febbraro
Originally Published: 2002-11-24
Post-World War II Canadian women had not been prepared for the new gender roles they were expected to covet. After holding down the fort for their men overseas, many women took a liking to factory work and other careers formerly belonging to men. One buffer posed to these women was that they could embrace a returned sense of femininity and go back to being the "angels of the house." Fashion was definitely one phenomenon which sought to climatize women to this change.
From Saturday, November 23, Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum showcases Elite Elegance: Couture Fashion in the 1950s. The presiding thesis of the exhibit is that glamour played a crucial role in the lives of women because "the evolving new style was based on traditional notions of femininity: small corseted waists, rounded shoulders, and long full skirts." This also played a huge social/political role in the grand scheme of things. For as women were being fired from their day jobs so that they could be replaced by the men returning from war, women needed a new compulsion, something to stride for. These are the fires where the Leave it to Beaver stereotype of the 1950s ideal female spouse was created.
In this exhibit, we see the creme-de-la-creme, approximately 60 pieces of the Museum's couture collection. The second aspect of the show is a focus on the women who wore couture clothing and the great designers who created the fashions. As the curator Dr. Alexandra Palmer, has said, these clothes symbolize what was expected from the upper class in terms of etiquette.
"Well-made clothes (stood) as evidence of their good taste and love of elegance and to fulfil well-understood social conventions and expectations." Instead of pants, skirts were expected, as well as several changes a day. Couture became the new career choice for women who could afford it, a career which never threatened the world of men, who were only expected to wear a single suit for the duration of the entire day.
So fashion exploded after the war. It was a time of luxury, of celebration, of gender redefinition, of the nuclear family, of simple values. It was the 1950s. There is a special magic, however artificially constructed the times seem, to the style of Jackie Onassis, for instance. Curator Alexandra Palmer speaks to this magic in her book, Couture and Commerce: The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s (2001): "As I looked at garments that repeatedly revealed evidence of frequent wear - worn hemlines on ball gowns, shortened hemlines, and numerous alterations and careful mends to many delicate and elaborate evening dresses as well as to day wear - I found myself with many unanswered questions... This physical evidence lays rest to the notion of couture as a disposable commodity." In other words, these items were treasured by their owners, and often worn to more than one occasion.
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