Object: Evening dress
Designer:
Emile Pingat
(1860 - 1896)
Date: c. 1895
Medium: Black silk velvet
Country: France
Credit Line: Museum purchase
Object number: 2005.9.1
DescriptionTwo-piece evening dress in black silk velvet apple motifs on tan and black marquisette or grenadine gauze, solid black velvet, lace, satin and cordwork; high neck with scalloped velvet collar band and pleated satin ruffle; closely fitted and boned, with flared peplum effect and tabbed velvet hem; long leg o' mutton sleeves with shirred lace double capelet and jabot; long bell skirt tightly shirred at back waist, with long flared train and self hem ruffle; couture
Label Text:This two-piece dress is a magnificent example of the haute couture in fin-de-siècle France. The New Eve envisioned by certain Decadents might have worn a dress like this, with its pattern of apples in black cut velvet. The iconography of forbidden fruit suggests that Woman is a sinfully expensive and desirable object, and projects an image of the fashionable woman as externalized surface without organic interiority. Like the dandy, the fashionable woman was a creature outside nature and beyond gender.
Exhibitions:
- Fashion & Textile History Gallery First Rotation