Object: Afternoon suit
Designer:
Lucile
(1863 - 1935)
Date: c. 1913
Medium: Velvet and lace
Country: USA
Credit Line: Museum purchase
Object number: P93.15.2
Descriptionformal afternoon suit with ecru lace blouse, ecru velvet cutaway jacket and long draped skirt
Label Text: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.”
Exhibitions:
- Arbiters of Style
- Exhibitionism: 50 Years of the Museum at FIT
- Designing the It Girl: Lucile and Her Style
- Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors