"Venezuela"

Nineteen fifty-four is the year in which Dior's collections were difficult to characterize, as they featured opulent flowerlike dresses alongside a variety of tailored menswear suits. His fall collection, the "H-line," justified by Dior as being inspired by the figure of a young girl, was in fact less so than the sweet dresses the year before. It may be that in this collection the silhouette was more about shape than about youth. The owner of this dress, Mrs. Byron C. (Thelma) Foy, was considered one of the most a fashionable women of her time. A purveyor of couture, Mrs. Foy was herself an outstanding arbiter of taste whose design suggestions were heeded and carried out. Like many of Dior's American clientele, she felt that excessive décolletage should be reserved for evening.