In yesterday's post we looked at some of the styles designed by Bonnie Cashin for 1944 film "Laura". While analysing the various costumes for that film we mentioned an ensemble donned on the screen by the aunt of the protagonist, Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), a rather flamboyant character. The ensemble referred to a '40s dress matched with a printed skirt casually tied at her waist in the style of a sarong. In a way this style was anticipated by a dress Cashin designed in 1942.
Cashin created the dress in question while she worked for Twentieth Century-Fox and Adler & Adler. The design had a similar construction to the one seen in "Laura", with a knotted detail around the waist, but the colour was bolder and the prints larger.
The dress was characterised by an aquatic-themed print replicated on the front and back to create a mirror-like effect on each side of the center seam (easy to do it today with digital printing techniques, but trickier then....). The dress is completed by "The Birth of Venus" on the shoulders and by prints of mermen down the center back seam.
Somehow the colour combination with pink prevailing on the back and white with lilac splashes characterising the front of the dress plus the large prints, makes you think about Schiaparelli rather than Cashin, but the optical trick added at the waist that gives the impression we're staring at separates and in particular at an overskirt tied at the waist with a knot rather than at one dress, is typical Cashin and it is interesting to see how the designer kept on developing this silhouette in the following years and readapted it for one of the characters in "Laura".
The dress was donated to the Brooklyn Museum by Cashin herself in 1951 and appeared in the 1962 retrospective "Bonnie Cashin Presents Her Living Sketch Book". Has the time finally come to organise a new exhibition dedicated to Cashin's career and iconic designs? Hopefully yes.
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