Evening dress

Edward Molyneux

1926–27 · silk · Costume Institute

The flapper dresses of the 1920s coexisted in couture and ready-to-wear, the latter often gaudy, the former continuing the linear interests of high-style dress of the 1910s. Molyneux was a designer of consummate good taste, walking a fine line between the refinements of couture style and a modernist aesthetic and the ambition to be socially and culturally advanced in the age of Anita Loos and Gatsby. Sequins in vertical stripes are overlaid with loose lengths of georgette picoted along the edges for a delicate shimmer on vertical filaments.

Artist

Edward Molyneux

Date

1926–27

Medium

silk

Culture

French

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Gift of Mrs. Adam Gimbel, 1942