A Star’s Style in a Museum Archive: Lauren Bacall @ The Met |

There are different ways to pay homage to somebody famous, and one way is to look at their style or wardrobe. In the case of Lauren Bacall – who died yesterday – this is quite easy to do since she donated in 1959 some of her garments designed by Norman Norell to the Brooklyn Museum. The dresses are now part of the Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Born Betty Joan Perske in 1924 to a working-class family in New York City, Bacall (she adopted her grandmother's surname when her father left her, adding to it a second 'l'), first worked as a model. She debuted in the noir film To Have and Have Not (1944), co-starring with her future husband Humphrey Bogart, after Nancy Hawks, wife of director Howard Hawks (who encouraged her to change her name into Lauren), spotted her portrait taken by Jerry Plucer-Sarna in Harper's Bazaar in 1943.

In 1945 she appeared in Confidential Agent and married Bogart in the same year, co-starring with him in three further movies – The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), while obtaining a more commercial success with How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe.

Bacall went back to the theatre after Bogart died in 1957, and was married from 1961 to 1969 to Jason Robards Jr. The actress won Tony Awards for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. In more recent years she appeared in the films Dogville (2003), Birth (2004) and The Walker (2007) and accepted an honorary Oscar in 2009.

Bacall died of a stroke yesterday at her home overlooking Central Park in Manhattan. She is survived by her three children, son Stephen Humphrey Bogart, daughter Leslie Bogart and son Sam Robards.

Fashion-wise it was Nancy Hawks who acted as Bacall's style guide: the actress quite soon adopted a sober style and started favouring garments by Norman Norell. The designer joined Paramount Pictures in the early 1920s to create clothes for Gloria Swanson and other stars. Norell then moved onto costumes for Broadway and founded in 1941 his own business in partnership with Anthony Traina, a wholesale clothing manufacturer.

Norell became famous for his simple yet tailored look: these words perfectly define also Bacall's style and the pieces currently preserved at the Met Museum archive. All the designs – in natural materials such as wool, cotton and silk – and in a rather limited palette of colours (neutrals and black in particular prevail), are characterised by a muted elegance and by sculptural lines.

Among the most notable pieces there are two wool and cotton dinner dresses (one from 1951 and another from 1957); a wool cocktail dress (1957) and a gray sleeveless dress with a black ribbon (1965).

They seem to be a testament to Bacall's minimalist and faultless style (the star actually boasts another more active fashion connection: she produced in the 2000s a jewellery line with the Weinman Brothers company) and prove that sensuality is not a matter of short skirts or low cut tops, but it's a perfect equation between style, posture, grace and elegance.