scostumista: 50's DRESS

The key features of the New Look are long, ample skirts creating a dancing silhouette; a fitted waist, rounded hips, creating a new ideal of proportions, a newly sculpted female form.
After the first Dior's show, Camel Snow, editor-in-chief of the prestigious Herper's Bazaar, declared: 'It's quite a revolution, dear Christian, your dresses have such a new look!' The years of war and rationing had subdued elegance and feminine allure. Christian Dior created a coup de théâtre by once again giving women a seductive figure, a supple and elegant look. He restructured the female body, making copious use of whalebones and petticoats. But his new 'flower women' met with many hostile reactions. Fingers were pointed disapprovingly at the twelve metres of fabric needed to make certain skirts. In the United States, a movement titled The Little-Below-the-Knee Club denounced the length of the skirts as retrograde step compared to certain feminist conquests. But the English and American press was hugely enthusiastic, greeting the new style in glowing terms.