Dinner ensemble

Bonnie Cashin

1950 · wool, silk · Costume Institute

Bonnie Cashin created award-winning clothing known for its casual comfort. As the daughter of a dressmaker, she was exposed to textiles and fashion nearly from birth and began designing professionally in 1925, at age 17. Prior to establishing her own company in 1951, she designed for Adler & Adler and Twentieth Century-Fox. Thereafter she worked with manufacturers such as Sills and Co. and Coach to offer fashion and accessories in every price bracket. She was adept at manipulating organic components into modern basics which could easily be mixed, matched and layered for the active woman. Her brightly colored leather trim, metallic toggle hardware and shaped knits are still a recognizable trademark of her work today. In 1962 the Brooklyn Museum, with her assistance and donations, staged, "Bonnie Cashin Presents Her Living Sketch Book," which was a retrospective of her work. Cashin's forethought to preserve her past while still designing is one which makes her work still accessible today. Several key elements of Cashin's style can be seen here with the high waist of the jacket, the undersized buttons and the casual loose blouse. The self belt tied around waist, over the blouse in the front and inside the blouse in the back, to leave the back floating free is typical of a 1950s silhouette.

Artist

Bonnie Cashin

Date

1950

Medium

wool, silk

Culture

American

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Bonnie Cashin, 1986