“Museum-Inspired Evening Fashions,” with photography by John Rawlings, was originally published in the June 1945 issue of Vogue.
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THE EGYPTIAN IDEA: A silhouette shown over and again on ancient friezes...a narrow covering, moulded down with a sparing use of drapery to a hobbled hem. New edition, a desert beige dinner-dress derived from Metropolitan Museum sources. Ben Reig design by Omar Kiam, in an Onondaga rayon crêpe macle to specifications for this particular dress. Chen Yu “Frozen Fire” lipstick and nail lacquer, intense coral-red to kindle beige.Photographed by John Rawlings, Vogue, June 1945
Editor’s note: We first resurfaced this story during COVID, when a visit to a museum felt as distant as the year it was published, 1945. As its premise is bringing art and fashion together, it seems to speak to the Met’s upcoming “Costume Art” exhibition.
The five evening dresses on these pages are part of what happened when the great Metropolitan Museum of New York invited teams of fabric and dress designers to work together, taking their inspiration from objects in the vast collections. A score or so of the most distinguished American fashion and fabric designers worked together in this way; the results were shown to the public in a fashion show staged by Lee Simonson, and some of the clothes are now being sold in New York shops. Not shown here: print-maker Brooke Cadwallader’s tear-drop design taken from a twelfth-century Mesopotamian vase; Nettie Rosenstein used the print for a distinguished evening dress. André Flory designed a sun-yellow Catoir Jacquard taffeta that follows the pattern of a bronze Caucasian belt-clasp; Norman Norell made a grand-manner corseleted gown from it. American designers, on their own, have come to use the museum more and more as a great fashion source; when a museum offers them its unlimited cooperation, the news is good . . . and full of promise for the future of fashion as an art.
THE GREEK THEORY: A theory of rational, beautiful lines, restated in this contemporary chiton: a mint-colour dinner-dress…blouse with a sequinned laurel wand, skirt with a triangled hem (it can be evened up). Tina Leser designed it from the Greek art collection at the Metropolitan Museum, using an especially created Foreman rayon crêpe. The Neo-Grecian sandals are Lucite, models only—available sometime in the future.Photographed by John Rawlings, Vogue, June 1945
[An] embroidered 18th-century dandy’s vest that inspired Hafner’s Bemberg rayon gilded brocade…and the shining dinner costume that was made of it. The sleeves are green silk jersey, the green repeated in a scarf. Suzanne-Augustine design.Photographed by John Rawlings, Vogue, June 1945
Clockwise from top left: ETRUSCAN WARRIOR…inspiration for the fabric and for the striking dinner-dress by Adrian; the Fiberset rayon crêpe made especially by Bianchini. VENETIAN BROCADE…source of a theatre-scene print on Gourdon’s Enka rayon crêpe; the print inspired a gown designed by Madame Eta. GRECIAN FRE…taken intact to stripe a Bianchini Fiberset rayon crêpe. The print inspired Traina-Norell’s slim little gown with a train. ANGEL’S WINGS from a 15th-century painting inspired Vertès wingéd print on Wesley Simpson’s Enka rayon crepe. From the print, a sequinned dinner-dress by Hattie Carnegie. Photographed by John Rawlings, Vogue, June 1945