I was never too fond of the lilac colour. My dislike with this colour has something to do with my teenage years when I risked of being cast in the part of a wisteria flower at a ballet school show (I ended up being cast as a white daisy, that sounds more plain and less extravagant, I know, but at least my costume didn't have rows of plastic flowers stuck on it that undesirably fell all over the stage…).
Anyway, today I was going through a few vintage magazines I have and I suddenly found myself being mesmerised by the lilac cover of this old French Elle magazine.
The issue is dated 14th May 1956 and it features Christian Dior's shantung
"Glycine" (wisteria) skirt suit, "le plus jolie tailleur d'été", as the magazine describes it in the inside cover.
The pale lilac suit that comprised a fitted jacket with a round collar and a pleated skirt, was matched with long white gloves and a dark lilac straw hat. Despite my dislike of the lilac colour I fell in love with this image, first and foremost because it uses in an interesting ways different nuances of lilac (background, hat and suit); then because I think it perfectly manages to conjure up the Spring/Summer season.
My favourite photoshoot in this magazine is entitled "Les plus jolies" and it's a direct reference to the cover image. In the photoshoot actress and model Marie-Hélène Arnaud (remember her as Josette in André Hunebelle's Mannequins de Paris?) and models Georgia and Dany pose in Christian Dior's designs for the 1956 Spring/Summer season, a rose printed muslin dress with a grosgrain pink ribbon, a white and pink shoulderless dress and lace gowns that featured embroidered motifs.
The photoshoot features four images, but only two of them are fully coloured (the ones on the right) and perfectly highlight the delicate embroideries and flowers that decorate the dresses.
The Elle cover made me think about the lilac colour used in Rodarte's Spring/Summer 09 collection combined with black and white in shorter dresses and with orange, black and white in longer evening gowns.
Rodarte's interpretation of the lilac colour is radically different from the one portrayed by Elle in 1956, being definitely more punkish and aggressive, but I find both the interpretations interesting. Maybe being cast as a wisteria wouldn't have been so bad after all…
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