“The dress sums up the light-hearted elegance of the collection. It’s in olive-green chiffon; from its one shoulder strap floats a loose panel which wraps round the other like a parody of a Peer’s robe”
This was how, in 1957, British Vogue described their pick from Givenchy’s new spring collection: a chiffon gown that twisted around its wearer with a green cape of gossamer silk. And it’s this dress that I have just added to my archive.
But I will preface this by saying it wasn’t actually the piece I intended to purchase at first. Having come up for sale in a recent auction, I instead had my sights set on a suit from two seasons previous: Spring/Summer 1956. Made from biscuit coloured silk shantung by Pétillault, the suit comprised of a narrow knee-length skirt, and a sharply cut jacket that, with two everted pleats at each shoulder blade, curved out and down one’s back in a strikingly convex silhouette. Aside from the impressive cut, the second impetus for wanting to buy it was that the same design was worn by Audrey Hepburn, in the fashion show scene in Funny Face. Armed with a matching silk parasol and a grosgrain trimmed straw hat, Audrey walks down the runway in all her sartorial glory, and brings the design to life. Although the original suit worn in the film is now in the legendary collection of Larry McQueen, I was hopeful to have the duplicate version in my own archive.
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