2012 06 Diy Shell Bouquet

Decorative features such as excessive pleating and lace were abandoned, leading to simplified styles that constituted a kind of civilian uniform. Paris retained a skeletal couture industry after the invasion in 1940, but the rest of the world was cut off from French fashion dictates. New US fashions emerged and some hoped that French couture’s sometimes excessive use of fabric and decorations had been banished forever, but this was not to be.

 

At the end of the 1920s the relatively brief reign of the short evening dress was over. The fashionable sipped cocktails in long, figure-hugging gowns that sometimes left little to the imagination. Frequently cut along the lines of swimwear, dresses were often precariously suspended from the thinnest of shoulder straps and left the backs of their wearers completely exposed. Shiny, fluid fabric—such as satin and lamé—was cut on the bias and manufactured into confections that clung to the body.

 

If dieting did not have the desired effect, women could buy foundations made of the new “tu-way stretch” materials to achieve the all-important smooth, unbroken line. Women stepped out in whites, off-whites, silver, gold, and shades of apricot, peach, and salmon—if they were not wearing black.

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