Komely Handbag
HISTORY OF EVENING ELEGANCE BAGS
COMELY HANDBAG
The more functional dressing of 1930s daywear did not apply to evening attire, when the Hollywood effect meant that glamour took center stage. It was the era of the silver fox
Movie queen, when stars such as Mae West and Carole Lombard appeared larger than life on the screen in backless or halter-neck dresses, their bare shoulders draped in fur capes and stoles.
At Paramount studios, the costume designer Travis Banton added to film star Marlene Dietrich’s allure with his glorious confections of fur and feathers.
Hollywood replaced Paris as the arbiter of style. The American designer Gilbert Adrian translated the revolutionary new cutting technique invented by the Parisian couturier Madeleine Vionnet onto the cinema screen. In the film Dinner at Eight (1933), Adrian’s bias cut backless dress and ostrich cape for hean Harlow introduced Parisian couture to the American mass market. The innovatory technique of cutting the fabric on the bias (across the grain, rather than with the weave of the cloth) allowed the fabric to cling to the body with an unadorned fluidity and a minimum of seaming.m
Vionnet’s aesthetic has influenced pattern cutting to the present day; both the work of the 1960s designer Ossie Clark and the slip dresses of John Galliano are reminders of her craft.