The Museum of Costume’s special exhibition for 2001 showcased
fashions of the 1950s – a decade of elegance and
style. Curators at the museum carefully selected
sixty outfits from the museum’s collection of fashionable dress to
illustrate the fashion system of the time.
Fashion in the 50s
was not just a roll call of designers. The exhibition was about how
the men, women and children who lived through this most
transitional of decades dressed.
The couture designers of Paris
certainly set the stylistic trend throughout the earlier part of
the 1950s. But how were these trends translated (and given an
individual spin) into the clothes chosen by the women of Britain,
all of whom wanted to look fashionable, whatever their income?
Fashion in the 50s
tackled this question by displaying both couture garments with a
high price tag, as well as dresses available to women with limited
means. From a rich cream silk satin evening dress covered in beads
by Norman Hartnell, to cotton day dresses made at home from
dressmaking patterns, this exhibition featured garments to which
everybody who was fashionable in the fifties will relate.
Fashion in the 50s also explored the processes
by which fashion trickled down from the Parisian couture to the
high street in towns and cities in Britain. Dresses produced by the
new ready-to-wear fashion houses, such as Frank Usher, and those
sold in local shops formed a large part of the exhibition.
No woman considered herself well dressed in the 1950s unless her
dress or suit was perfectly accessorised. Fashion in the
50s finished the look off by including examples of hats,
shoes, gloves and handbags of the period.
1950s dresses on display in 'Fashion in the
50s'
1950s dresses on display in 'Fashion in the
50s'
1950s advertisement for Kayser Bondor slips