The Fashion Businessby lowering hemlines and removing shoulder pads; others focused on
acquiring an entirely new wardrobe. There were protests in Great Britain
from Labour Party politicians and some members of the public, who argued
that the New Look was profligate and retrograde.
But the style was wildly popular with many women, who felt starved for
glamour and femininity after the war years. “We are saved,” wrote Susan
Mary Alsop, “becoming clothes are back, gone the stern padded shoulders,
in are soft rounded shoulders without padding, nipped-in waists, wide, wide
skirts about four inches below the knee. And such well-made armor inside
the dress that one doesn’t need underclothes; a tight bodice keeps bust and
waist small as small, then a crinoline-like underskirt of tulle, stiffened, keeps
the skirt to the ballet skirt tutu effect that Mr. Dior wants to set off the tiny
waist.”
The cost of a couture dress was “very high”, she admitted. However, the
New Look was soon “knocked off” at all price points. Already the structure
of the fashion system was changing, as the haute couture was transformed
from a system based on the atelier to one dominated by the global corporate
conglomerate. Paris was the capital of fashion, but its mode of influence
owed much to American-style licensing and mass-manufacturing. To a far
greater extent than hitherto, this was a mass society when “fashion for all”
became a reality. This trend has only accelerated in subsequent decades.
The profile of fashion designers was already very different in the 1950s
than it had been in the 1920s. “Women are bad fashion designers. The only
role a woman should have in fashion is wearing clothes,” declared Jacques
Fath in 1954. Behind Fath’s provocative rhetoric lurked an undeniable fact.
In the 1920s and 1930s, women had dominated the French couture. After
the war, however, the new stars of the couture were men like Christian Dior,
Christobal Balenciaga, and Jacques Fath. As fashion was reconceived as big
business and high art, rather than a small-scale luxury craft that required a
minimal investment, women designers lost ground. At the turn of the century
Jeanne Lanvin had opened her own business with a loan of 300 francs. Marcel
Boussac invested $500,000 in establishing the House of Dior.
Only a few women were able to marshal this type of financial backing,
notably Coco Chanel whose perfume business was lucrative. Chanel herself
was not above exploiting the prejudices of her day. Fath claimed that “Fashion
is an Art and men are the Artists.” But Chanel insisted that “Men were not
meant to design for women.” The sight of women in Dior’s New Look fashions
acted on her as “a red flag to a bull”, recalled Franco Zeffirelli. In his
autobiography he described how Chanel voiced ugly homophobic sentiments:
“Look at them. Fools, dressed by queens living out their fantasies. They dream
of being women, so they make real women look like transvestites.”