Couture and Commerce: The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s

by Alexandra Palmer

The 1950s were the golden years of haute couture, captured by iconic images of glamorous models wearing dramatic clothes. Yet the real women who wore these clothes adapted them to suit their own tastes, altered them to extend their life, and often could not bear to part with them long after the dresses had outlived their use. This gorgeously illustrated book demonstrates why so many of these designs are still in existence and why we are fascinated by them fifty years later.

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction

420 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In all my years of studying fashion history, COUTURE AND COMMERCE is by far the most impressively researched and revealing books I've encountered on fashion history, material culture, and "the biography of an object."

[Allison Thurman]

Companion volume to Royal Ontario Museum exhibit back in 2003

[Katrina Sark · Rating 1 out of 5]

“Chic” has nothing to do with money. I who dress some of the richest women in the worlf can vouch for that. (Ginette Spanier, 1959)