Paul Poiret was the son of a textile distributor with the ambition and creativity to become a fashion designer. Brief employment for Jacques Doucet (1853-1929) and the House of Worth (1858-1956) led him to open his own dressmaking shop near the Place de l'Opèra in 1903 at the age of 24. His first two design albums, "Les Robes de Paul Poiret" drawn by Paul Iribe (1883-1935) in 1908 and "Les Choses de Paul Poiret" created by Georges Lepape (1887-1971) in 1911, not only changed the concept of fashion marketing and illustration, they prophesied the pivotal transition women made from the corseted silhouette of the Victorian age into the natural and sleek un-corseted form of the modern era. The tubular shape and folkloric trimmings he presented were continuously part of the Poiret vocabulary as well as draping, which proved ingenious in the time of tailoring and drafting.One of Poiret's early designs, this dress exemplifies the fashions he presented in his first two albums. His combination of historical recreation, as seen in the pleated collar, alongside the modern, such as the graphic bold horizontal stripes in the textile, began the freedom in clothing which is synonymous with the emancipation of women which climaxed in the first half of the 20th century across Europe and the United States.
