Dress
Designer Charles James American
Not on view
The voluminous design of this dress lent itself to a maternity version that James made for Lane Bryant, in which the faille exterior is attached to a taffeta underslip that is cut to expand gradually from under the bust to accommodate a pregnancy. To develop the design, James established the angle of the expansion with tapes passed through staples tacked into a wooden platform. Despite the design’s origins in complicated engineering, the final dressmaking solution for the blouson was a simple horizontal welt tuck circling the skirt, angled high at back and lower at front.
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