1923 Black silk dress
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1923 A black silk dress
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The back of the dress
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One of the motifs appliquéd on to the skirt
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Detail of the decoration showing the silver filé embroidery on the face (above) and reverse (below).
Description
The dress is in a soft silk taffeta, and has no openings at the back or sides.
The neck has an edging of black silk tulle, 1¼" wide, which widens to 1¾" at the centre front and back, and the top edge is bound with silk, ³⁄₁₆" wide. The tulle is now very fragile and disintegrating, and has been backed with silk organza to support it. The hem has shallow curves with the same tulle edging, 2¼" wide and also in fragments.
The armhole edges have the ³⁄₁₆" wide silk binding, and all the seams are piped; the skirt is gathered into the dropped waist with a piped seam.
The skirt is decorated with eight large sylised flower shapes in pink silk in three shades, which are distributed in different places on different flowers; the silk is very fragile and the flowers have been covered with net to hold the fragments in place. The flowers have a green leaf each side. All the motifs are outlined in silver filé chain stitch embroidery to look like a braid, about ¼" wide, and this also outlines all the petals. The motifs have been applied over a thin layer of wool wadding making them rather stiff, and this distorts the hang of the soft silk and the scalloped shape of the hem.
Contemporary illustrations
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Detail from a cartoon in Punch, July 1922
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Detail from a cartoon in Punch, May 1923
History
There was a short-lived fashion around 1923 for full skirted evening dresses, different from the typical straight silhouette of the twenties.
The dress belonged to Marjorie Robinson, the daughter of Rose Gibson (Rose Wood).