1945 - 1960 The Suburban Dream Jump to:
1945 - 1960 The Suburban Dream Jump to:
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4 Christian Dior: The New Look
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With the war over, for women some things changed while others remained all too much the same. It is an oversimplification to see the war as a period of outright liberation for women, but nor is it true that they were just pushed back into the home after the cessation of hostiIities. In 1947 Christian Dior presented a fashion look with a fitted jacket with a nipped in waist and full calf length skirt. It was a dramatic change from wartime austerity styles. After the rationing of fabric during the Second World War, Dior's lavish use of material was a bold and shocking stroke. His style used yards and yards of fabric. Approximately 10 yards was used for early styles. Later Dior used up to 80 yards for newer refinements that eliminated bulk at the waist. The New Look was the symbol of the new life style and the hopes of the people. ”Envol”, typical features were that, skirts were scooped up at the back, worn with jackets that were cut with loose, fly-away backs and stand-up collars. In 1950s skirts became shorter.
The New Look and new approach to fashion was a major post war turning point in Fashion History.
At the same time popular culture - in films, magazines and in fashion - moved away from prewar and wartime images of women on an equal footing with men, back into a nostalgic fantasy world in which women were either romantic period heroines or ambivalent femmes fatales. Meanwhile, there was a conscious ideological emphasis on the overriding importance of family life.
The Nazi occupation of France had temporarily closed the Paris haute couture houses. Initialiy their wholesale removal to Berlin had been canvassed, but eventualiy they remained on French soil. Some of the top designers refused to work under the Nazis, but many worked on through the war with the aim of preserving the industry in French hands. Both French and German fashions during this period became more fussy, romantic and extravagant, and in fact laid the basis for the postwar "New Look".
 Dior's New Look dominated the fashion world for about ten years, but was not the only silhouette of the era. 1956 was the year that introduced visible changes that separate the early fifties from the late fifties. It places that fashion era firmly alongside the stuffy formality of the forties, whilst putting the post 1956 period firmly into the start of the livelier, anything goes sixties fashion period, often dominated by the young of the day.Although Dior pioneered new links \\ith the mass market and franchised his designs, Paris designers stili regarded themselves as true artists endowed with "genius", and a clear distinction was made between their exquisite individual creations and the general run of department-store fashion. In most of Europe, rniddleclass women still preferred to seek the services of a "littIe" dressmaker, who could copy the new lines from the grand houses - for the illusion of exclusivity was still a necessary part of the mystique of fashion, however widely styles might be copied, however popular they rnight become.
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