Cinched and Pinched – A Brave New World?
‘Bravo! Magnifique! Ravissant!’
Reaction to Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’, Paris 1947
In 1947, two years after the war ended, the fashion pendulum swung once more, this time out of grey and grim wartime austerity towards an ultra-feminine ‘new look’, a phrase coined by Carmel Snow, editor of American Harper’s Bazaar, and designed by Frenchman Christian Dior. Though trousers were accepted in the workplace and for leisure, dresses and skirts were still considered proper garments for going out in public and Dior’s creations once again celebrated the hour-glass shape with London couturier John Cavanagh describing the style as ‘a total glorification of the female form, all waist, hip and breast’.
No doubt a breath of fresh air for those tired of the military, masculine look, this latest phenomenon was a direct backlash as skirts now sported yards and yards of fabric. But with few women actually possessing a perfect hour-glass shape and designers willing to contort what she had to fit his ideal, yes, you’ve guessed correctly, a voluminous petticoat, in essence a crinoline, was re-introduced to flare out the hips under the skirt aided by a ‘cincher’, if not a full corset, employed to reduce the waist. If that is not a fashion full circle then what is?
Dior was heavily criticised for his innovation as the amount of fabric required to create a New Look garment was in direct conflict with the rationing that was still in place. With the economic situation in Britain remaining dire, opposition to the New Look was based on ‘waste’. Things even reached the ears of the Board of Trade when an English fashion journalist, Alison Settle, went to see Sir Stafford Cripps, its President. Intent on getting the clothing ration increased in order for women to be able to afford even one New Look dress, she was greeted instead with a bellowed ‘out of the question’. With England struggling to get back on its feet, Cripps was astounded women would even consider buying something that would far outstrip their coupons. He even suggested there should be a law against the ‘Look’ and its swaying ballerina skirts which swirled around the legs held out by taffeta and tulle petticoats.
The New Look also cinched and pinched women into shapes reminiscent of those of their Victorian if not Georgian grandmothers. Rob Wagner, an article writer for the American publication the Script, in May 1947 wrote disparagingly of Dior’s revolution in women’s dress, saying it tried to make a woman look good ‘where she aint’. Others, especially older women who well remembered the sacrifices made in the ‘Make Do and Mend’ years, were having none of it. In autumn 1948 a photographer captured on film an incident in the Parisian Rue Lepic where a young woman literally had her clothes torn off by outraged females who were incensed at the yards of fabric in her new skirt.
Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ of 1947 was a world away from the austere fashions of the war years.
It was hard for English women to see the French and American fashion markets at liberty to indulge in Dior’s generous designs given that they were still at the mercy of rationing. However, it wasn’t long before a forward-thinking buyer for a chain of low-price clothes shops managed to supply outlets with racks of inexpensive copies of ‘New Look’ clothes. Suddenly, like so many amiable sheep, English women were able to follow their transatlantic sisters and indulged for the first time in a decade in feminine contours, broader hiplines and smaller waists. It was not easy as a stodgy wartime diet would now make it necessary for most English women to slim-down in order to wear them properly. Dior’s designs, reminiscent of those created by bustles and crinolines, required an average 20in waist, which even models were finding difficult to maintain. For one fashion show where the modelling was to have been shared between American and French mannequins it was eventually decided that only the French women were to be used as the American waistline averaged 25in.
The hand-span waist so beloved by Dior was achieved by a waist cincher. Popularly called the ‘waspie’ or ‘guepiere’, it was boned and back-laced, and differed from the Victorian corsets of the previous century only in length, usually being a narrow 6 to 7in and used not whalebone but what magazines of the day liked to call ‘super-light-weight feather boning’.
‘I think of my work as ephemeral architecture, dedicated to the beauty of the female body’, Dior.
It was also a godsend for Dior that the young English princesses, daughters of King George VI, Elizabeth and Margaret were captivated by the New Look, but despite their ‘captivation’ the King still insisted they comply with the restrictions of the day just as everyone else. Fortunately, a royal courtier managed to give Princess Margaret a taste of the New Look she wanted by having one of her coats altered within the proper limits by the insertion of several black velvet bands and so was able to afford the princess the desired silhouette. By the autumn of 1947 when Dior was showing his collection at the Savoy a request was made by the Palace for a private viewing of his collection in the presence of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and their mother the Queen. Also in attendance would be the Duchess of Kent and her sister, Princess Olga of Yugoslavia. A slightly clandestine affair, the venue was to be the home of the French ambassador’s wife, Madame Massagli, into which dresses and models were smuggled with the minimum of publicity. Four years later Dior had obviously found royal approval as he was commissioned to design Princess Margaret’s ball gown on the occasion of her 21st birthday in 1951.
Dior went from strength to strength but denied he had worked any miracles. ‘No one person can change fashion – a big fashion change imposes itself,’ he declared, adding, ‘the New Look was inevitable because women longed to look like women again’. Dior had read the mood of the world’s women and got it right, but also re-introduced the tyranny of previous centuries where women were obliged to fit their clothes as opposed to their clothes fitting them. To get the fashion right magazines became full of adverts for girdles, cinchers, corsets and ‘corselets’, unwittingly advocating today’s modern adage of ‘no pain no gain’ with slogans such as ‘To maintain your figure at its flattering best, depend on foundation garments to control and distribute’ or ‘your figure is moulded into new lines, inches disappear from waist, hips and thighs all with ease and comfort!’. In the light of modern-day fashions it all sounds tantamount to medieval torture, the latter slogan continuing to describe how it was designed with a ‘magic double diagonal pull’, a double elastic waistband which was wrapped around the waistline and hooked at the back.
‘You can wear yours all day with ease … your hips prettily curved, your waist incredibly tiny … precisely the figure that fashion decrees!’. An advert from 1948 featuring both a long-line girdle and wasp-waist or ‘waspie’ cincher.
With fashion still bullying its way through the post-war decade, what to wear for most was still more of a ‘must’ than an option. Yet, there was change ahead. The 1950s gave birth to the concept of the teenager, something up until then unheard of. Young people, influenced by film, television, magazines and the music scene, had money in their pockets from paid work and as new consumers were able to fund their independence and indulge in their own style of clothes. No self-respecting ‘teen’ was content to be a simple miniature of their parents; a new phenomenon, ‘The Generation Gap’, had well and truly arrived.
With the 1960s emerging as a decade of growing optimism and social and economic change fashion completely shrugged off structured styles, embracing instead a vibrant youth culture and young people’s tastes in clothes followed their taste in music. Short A-line styles in bright colours were sold cheaply in London boutiques and inspirational new designers experimented with geometric shapes, new textiles and patterns with Mary Quant ultimately popularising the ‘mini-skirt’ which sat well over 7in above the knee. It was an iconic garment, one that possibly paralleled the boyish ‘flapper’ style in vogue in the 1920s and though nearly half a century apart both styles screamed liberation.
The mini-skirt hits London, 1960s. (Photograph Robert Hallmann)
While it was a short-lived freedom for the flapper, youth was not about to relinquish its hold on the fashion world so quickly a second time and can be seen behind almost every fashion trend from then until the present day. With mini-skirts and hot-pants exposing ever more flesh and fronting what appeared to many to be a total abandonment of decency, hemlines, in 1970, suddenly plummeted as ladies voluntarily adopted a new ankle-length maxi-skirt with enthusiasm. Was this, in retrospect, a defining decision? Was this fashionable return to modesty the pivotal moment women stopped being slaves to fashion and had the final say in how they looked? One could argue that if it wasn’t for the designer swinging the pendulum yet again women would have had no such choice. Yet, it was more important than women today realise. The mere co-existence of the ‘long’ and ‘short’ at that particular same moment in time broke all the rules: rules that medieval sumptuary laws and Elizabethan fashion legislation had failed to enforce. From that point on fashion became personal with designers providing the ability to embrace both formality and ‘casual dressing’, something that has laid the foundations for what we comfortably wear today and how we will be dressed in the future. At last what they wore and how they wore it had become a decision both men and women were finally at liberty to make for themselves.
The midi/maxi fashion that followed the mini-skirt.
