Evening dress
One of the world's great connoisseurs and collectors of eighteenth-century art and decorative arts wore this dress. Givenchy is an unrelenting modernist; here he may have been touched by his experience of working with Schiaparelli in his offering of a truncated illusion of an open robe in the back using a fall of cloth, like a fly panel except that it is heavy to fly away or drape away. Rather, it functions as a reductive form of an eighteenth-century back, heavy in a continuous flow to the ground. The exotic and sumptuous fabric only confirms the intimation of the eighteenth century in spite of Givenchy's modernity.
Artwork Details
- Title: Evening dress
- Design House: (a) House of Givenchy (French, founded 1952)
- Designer: (a) Hubert de Givenchy (French, Beauvais 1927–2018 Paris)
- Design House: (b, c) House of Dior (French, founded 1946)
- Designer: (b, c) Roger Vivier (French, 1913–1998)
- Date: fall/winter 1961–62
- Culture: French
- Medium: silk, metallic thread
- Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Charles B. Wrightsman, 1962
- Object Number: C.I.62.50.2a–c
- Curatorial Department: The Costume Institute
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