The New Look (1947)

On 12 February 1947, Christian Dior showed his first collection in Paris. Its official name was the Corolle line, after the ring of petals around the centre of a flower, but it's known by the phrase the American fashion editor Carmel Snow is credited with: a "New Look". Rounded, soft shoulders; a tightly cinched waist; padded hips; and a long, full skirt, some styles using up to fifteen yards of fabric. After years of wartime restrictions, it was extravagant on purpose, and it dominated women's fashion for the next decade.

What it broke with

To see why the New Look was such a shock, you have to remember the clothes of the war years:

• Britain rationed clothing from 1941 until 1949. Everyone received a limited allowance of coupons, and a dress cost several of them. The government's Utility scheme, marked with the label CC41, set standards and limited the fabric, trimmings and styles of ready-made clothes. The Board of Trade's Make Do and Mend campaign encouraged people to repair, remake and recycle what they had.
• The United States rationed clothing far less severely, but government regulations introduced in 1942 limited the amount of fabric in clothing, restricting skirt widths, lengths and details.
• The wartime silhouette was correspondingly economical: skirts just below the knee and fairly narrow, square padded shoulders, short boxy jackets, and practical details.

The New Look reversed all of it: longer skirts, huge amounts of fabric, a fragile-looking waist and soft shoulders instead of square ones.

The Bar suit

The most famous outfit of the collection, the Bar suit, sums up the look: a fitted jacket in pale silk shantung, nipped at the waist and padded over the hips into a curved peplum, worn with a full, pleated black wool skirt reaching well below the knee. Hat, gloves and heels completed it.

Not everyone approved

The collection was a sensation, but also a provocation, and the Mass Observation Archive's records of public opinion show how divided people were. To many people, especially in Britain where clothing was still rationed, a style that used so much fabric seemed thoughtless at a time of shortages. Politicians criticised it, and some women protested against longer hemlines. Within a few years, though, the silhouette had been adopted almost everywhere, in ready-to-wear and home sewing patterns as well as couture.

How it's built

The New Look looks effortless, but it's carefully engineered. Several layers work together:

1. The foundation. A waist-cinching corselet or guêpière (a short, boned corset), often with padded hips, created the curve underneath. Corsetry came back into fashion with it. See Evolution of Undergarments.
2. The bodice or jacket. Closely fitted with darts and shaped seams, often lined and internally structured with canvas, padding at the hips, and sometimes boning, so it held its shape independently of the body.
3. The skirt. Fullness came from many gores, deep pleats or unpressed knife pleats, and from stiffened petticoats and linings. Horsehair braid or stiff interlining at the hem held the skirt out.
4. The waist seam, where all the fullness had to be controlled without adding bulk: pleats folded precisely, seam allowances graded, and a firm waist stay.

Sewing a New Look reproduction

• Start with the foundation. Wear or make a waist cincher or longline bra and girdle, and fit everything over it. The jacket and bodice are designed around that shape.
• Shape the jacket with tailoring techniques: interface the fronts and peplum, pad the hips with layers of wadding shaped into a crescent, and use steam to mould the curves. See Tailoring vs. Dressmaking Traditions.
• Fit the waist precisely. The look depends on the waist being snug. Use a boned bodice or a grosgrain waist stay for dresses.
• Control the skirt fullness at the waist with pleating or gathering, grading the allowances to keep the waist seam slim.
• Support the skirt with a petticoat of net or organza, or with horsehair braid in the hem, rather than adding more fashion fabric, which makes it heavy without making it fuller.
• Choose fabrics with body: wool flannel, barathea and crepe for suits and skirts, silk faille, taffeta and shantung for dresses and jackets.

What came next

The New Look became the foundation of 1950s fashion. Dior himself introduced a new line every season, varying the shape, until his death in 1957. It's useful to think of the New Look as a return to structured, corsetry-based construction after decades in which fashion had moved away from it, first through the loose 1920s and the softly draped 1930s, then through wartime austerity.