Medium: Velvet and lace

Date: c. 1913

Country: USA

Credit: Museum purchase

The dancer Irene Castle, whom Lucile declared “the first of the moderns,” wore a version of this suit. Lucile fused masculine and feminine elements into a youthfully elegant style with a cutaway jacket inspired by nineteenth-century menswear and draped skirt panels that reveal a lace underlayer. The narrow skirt has a back slit and full-skirted petticoat that would have accommodated a dancer’s footwork. Castle was dressed by Lucile onstage and off; she proclaimed the designer “one of the most remarkable dress artists I had ever known.”

Object Number: P93.15.2