Featuring over seven decades of feminine fashion, from haute couture and ready-to-wear garments to accessories, 'Fabulous Fashion: From Dior's New Look to Now' will present masterworks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection. Highlights include Grace Kelly's wedding headpiece (1956), Christian Lacroix's exuberant catsuit (1990) and recent designs by Bernhard Willhelm.
The haute couture and ready-to-wear garments and accessories on view range in date from 1947 - the year of the introduction of Christian Dior's revolutionary "New Look" - to recent ensembles by audacious designer Bernhard Willhelm. Focusing on fashion as an art form, the exhibition is arranged thematically to explore designers' creative use of color and pattern, shape and volume, draping, metallics, bridal traditions and innovations, and exquisite embellishments. Works will be grouped together to offer striking visual comparisons and demonstrate the relentlessly creative spirit of fashion.
A pair of ensembles from fifty years apart opens the exhibition, each embodying fashion-forward dressing for its time. Dior's two-piece pale pink satin day dress from1948, with a nipped-in waist and full skirt that epitomizes the ultra-feminine "New Look," contrasts with a flirtatious hot pink fur-collared wool suit designed in 1998 by John Galliano for the house of Dior.
Photo: Dress 1994, Designed by Pierre Cardin, Courtesy of Pierre Cardin Archives