Evening dress
Brand
Lanvin
(French, founded 1889)
Designer
Jeanne Lanvin
(1867 - 1946)
Winter 1928
Silk taffeta and silk net
Museum purchase
Object number2013.5.2
Throughout the 1920s, couturier Jeanne Lanvin championed full-skirted dresses that were alternatives to the era’s prevailing sleek moderne sheaths. Lanvin’s robe de style de dixhuitième siècle, or eighteenth-century style dress in French, was evocative of the costumes made for Ballets Russes productions such as Carnaval. The robe de style (as it is popularly known), with its dropped waist and billowing, flared skirt, was also called the “Camargo” frock, after the Rococo-era ballet dancer Marie Camargo, who was famous for shortening her panniered gowns to reveal her virtuoso footwork.
DescriptionAqua blue sleeveless evening dress in iridescent silk taffeta, scoop neck bodice with dropped waist hip yoke, full flared skirt with cascading rows of taffeta petals on silk net, zigzag hemline longer at sides, bias trim; alteredCollections
Exhibitions