Charles James | c. 1951
corset ca. 1880 via The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Balenciaga | c. 1948
Keenly historicist, Balenciaga invented a fantasy of eighteenth-century court dress, knowing that Marie-Antoinette favored overdresses with swags anchored by roses. Sustained by wide panniers also appropriated from eighteenth-century fashion, Balenciaga renewed the Rococo rose for the 1940s and 1950s. (Costume Institute)
