Photos By Gail
This Mermaid-like Bridal Ensemble was worn by New York socialite Natalie Potter for her wedding to financier William Conkling Ladd on December 4, 1930. Its dramatic, cathedral-length train features interlocking scallops that recall undulating ocean waves and the concentric circles of seashells.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Mermaid Bridal Gown By Callot Soeurs
Photo By Gail
Alexander McQueen once declared, “Birds in flight fascinate me.” One of his favorite films was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller The Birds, which inspired his spring/summer 1995 collection, including this jacket. Made from orange wool twill, it features a swarm of swallows screen printed by Simon Ungless and Andrew Groves. Individual birds gradually materialize from the ominous black cloud of swallows at the exaggerated shoulders, swooping around the body of the jacket and increasing in size but decreasing number towards the hem.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as Part of the Exhibit Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.
Photo By Gail
Nature and artifice coalesce in Connor Ives‘ Couture Girl Dress from the designer’s 2020 graduate collection, “The American Dream,” which was inspired by the women with whom he grew up in Bedford, New York. The garment’s bulblike shape parodies the pneumatic silhouettes of mid-20th-century fashion.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Conner Ives Couture Girl Dress