The Things They Wore.(Giving Globally)(Fashion)(The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957 exhibit)

Byline: Dana Thomas

Celebrating the golden age of couture at the V&A.

The war was over. The denizens of Paris and London were ready to dress up again. And an aspiring French designer named Christian Dior knew exactly what they should wear. On February 12, 1947, Dior opened his new couture house in Paris with a fashion show of chic, elegant suits and dresses with cinched waists, padded hips and full skirts made of what seemed like acres of fabric -- a radical idea after six years of shortages and rationing. Harper's Bazaar editor Carmel Snow declared Dior's daring silhouette a "New Look." And it kicked off a renaissance in fashion that Dior himself would later dub "a golden age."

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London clearly believes he was onto something. Its grand new exhibit, "The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957" (thru Jan. 20), is as rich and graceful as the women who originally purchased and wore the clothes. "Dior worked only 10 years but he and his contemporaries had an enormous impact on fashion," says the show's curator, Claire Wilcox. "They set a template for how fashion operates today." Indeed, the show is heavy on Dior, which accounts for about one third of the more than 100 dresses on display. It opens with a handful of classic Dior New Look outfits, including the now-iconic "Bar" suit: a white, fitted five-button jacket with padded hips over an ample black pleated skirt.

Wilcox uses modern media to illustrate how the clothes lived, with film footage of fashion shows and magazine photographs by Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton and Irving Penn. The wittiest installation is the recreation of an Avedon shoot of 1950s top model Suzy Parker, the look-alike mannequin dressed in the original Dior dress copying the pose in the photo hanging on the wall. Small galleries explore different areas of couture craftsmanship: lingerie, with corsets and waist-cinchers creating the New Look's hour-glass figure; embroidery, with swathes of jeweled cloth; the atelier, with sketches, patterns, swatches and mock-ups of dresses; and the "boutique" where clients could pick up a hat, fan, brooch or pair of gloves to go with the ensemble.

But nothing speaks more ...