Description:
Black silk taffeta chemise-style dress with two sashes on the proper left side that tie to form a large bow. The pattern pieces for the front and back of the dress are virtually identical, but mirror image, with a dropped waist denoted by pairs of vertical darts, and a gathered hem flounce (cut in one with each panel). Two horizontal or fish-eye darts on the dress front near the wearer's stomach provide a slight fit. Two pairs of darts at the shoulders in front fit the dress as well; otherwise it is straight-fitting. Descriptions of similar early 1920s-dress construction can be seen in a 1922 publication by P. Clement Brown entitled "Art in Dress," most notably the "Opposite Silhouette Logic and Simple Line Balance/Relation of Line." This dress was purchased and worn by the donor's mother, Eleanor Fitzgerald Esleeck (1887-1972). The label, which is black, has woven bright yellow letters (a combination that may be typical for the labels on mid-1920s dresses made in-store) that spell "Bonwit Teller/ Fifth Ave. New York." Esleeck purchased other items from Bonwit Teller that are in the Historic Deerfield collection, including a black straw hat from about 1913-1925, accession number 94.004.21. These items well-illustrate the patronage of exclusive department stores by wealthy residents of the Connecticut River Valley. Bonwit Teller was founded by Paul J. Bonwit (1862-1939), a German immigrant who moved to America in the 1880s. He founded the department store with Edmund D. Teller around 1897, and by 1911 their Manhattan store was located on Fifth Avenue. By the mid-twentieth century, following the general trend of other department stores, Bonwit Teller had opened up other store locations throughout the country. Bonwit Teller went out of business at the end of the twentieth century, with the Fifth Avenue store torn down in 1990 to make way for Trump Tower. A similar dress by the French couturiere Madeleine Vionnet is sketched in the January, February or March 1926 issue of Harper's Bazar. This fact supports the notion that this dress was a custom creation in Bonwit Teller's dressmaking salon, an adaptation of a couture model (probably by Vionnet).
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+94.004.13 |
