時尚的歷史，1950s

Hello, my name is John Knight, and I run a lovely fashion shop called Vintage 2 Versace. Now, my passion, obviously, is fashion, and I love to talk about the history of fashion. And so I'm going to present to you the history of fashion through the 20th century. This is episode 5. The 1950s The 1950s was a decade of some change. We had a war to recover from, and it had depressed the whole of Europe. And so we were left with deficiencies in materials. We were left with deficiencies in food. Everything seemed to be at rock-bottom levels. But gradually, led by Christian Dior, who in 1948 produced the wonderful A-line, we began to see a return to the romantic, to the beautiful, to the extravagant use of fabulous materials. And in the UK, it took a little bit longer, but we did arrive there eventually. And what I want to show you is a typical 1952 dress from a debutante's wardrobe. Now, debutantes were the young ladies of the wealthy and upper classes who were presented at court. And in order to be presented at court, they had a debutante's dress. This one was created for a lovely young lady who lived not too far from here, and she donated it to me a couple of years ago. I'd like to show Elsa wearing a debutante's dress in very heavy velvet, made in 1952 from a luxurious velvet material. It's etched in gold, and this gold thread is very heavy, very intricately done. And the dress itself is highly tailored at the top, figure-hugging, and yet extremely modest. The neck only extends a few inches down. It has a beautiful collar, as you can see. And it's tight to the waist. From the waist, a lot of material used again to emphasize the sumptuousness of this. Now, the collar looks black, but is in fact very, very dark green. If I move it, perhaps in the light, you'll be able to see the shimmering of green in that fabulous fabric. So this is an important dress. It is a dress that would have been used for extremely important occasions. And I think it's one of the most elegant dresses that we have in our collection. Let's just see the back, and you'll see again the simpleness of the cut. A zip introduced, by the way, at the end of the Second World War, so zips were in use. Metal ones until the 60s, when nylon was invented. Turn back around again, Elsa. That's lovely. What a super dress that is. Thank you very much, Elsa. Now I want to introduce Miriam in a dress by a young designer in the 1950s called Frank Archer. Frank Archer is a well-known name today, and throughout the 80s and 90s, he was extremely popular. But his first creations were in the 50s, and this is one of the very first that he made. He made it under the name of a department store, because he didn't have his own outlet. So he made this for a department store, and one lucky lady would have gone to the department store, seen this, and had it just tailored to suit herself. It's a very interesting dress, because it harks back almost to the Victorian era in its construction. It has this wonderful, colorful pinafore front. You see it's fairly tight over the bust and neat over the waist, but the pinafore ties at the back and is separate from the skirt. The skirt is heavily pleated, a heavily pleated taffeta, and you turn around just to show a little bit of the front. Here,in its construction, you can see coarse material, just like Victorian underskirts were made of. But it's hidden behind this fabulous pinafore. So a pinafore dress designed in the early 50s by Frank Archer. Let's just have one look at the back again. Yup. It has a zip,a metal zip. It has a nice bow, and I think perhaps at one time the bow would have been fixed to the back. And the pinafore falls neatly away at the back there. It has straps, but it hardly needs them because the bodice is so tight. But I think this is a very interesting early dress by a great designer. Turn back around. How lovely is that? I think it's an absolutely super 1950s cocktail dress by Frank Archer. Thank you,Miriam. Thank you for listening and looking at this episode of The History of Fashion. And this is just a reminder to let you know that we can bring this event with my models and our dresses and myself to tell the story at an event or an occasion, or if you're an organization and you organize shows, we'd be delighted to come and be your guests and do The History of Fashion for you.