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fashioninhistory:

Madame Grès

Evening Dress

1944 

White silk jersey one-piece dress; finely pleated; eleven bones inside bodice

Small pleats contour the lines of the chest, and the natural flow of the cloth becomes a skirt. This work demonstrates the typical style of Grès. Madame Grès opened the fashion house Alix in 1934, but was forces to close it in 1939. In 1942 she opened a new house under her husband’s “nom d’artiste”, Grès. In the mid-1930s she became known for extravagantly arranged clothes made of silk jersey in the classical Greek style and with few visible seams. The dress illustrated here was designed in 1944 for actress Danièle Delorme for her appearances in Jean Anouih’s play “Antigone”.