Hal Rubenstein - 100 Unforgettable Dresses

Hal Rubenstein

Foreword by Alber Elbaz

FOR MOLLY

I keep looking for the dress thats as lovely as she is.

As a designer, I know how the process of dressmaking starts, but I never know how it will end. Its a fascinating adventure but its also a long, complicated one. Because a memorable dress has to do more than merely look amazing. Its not just three yards of fabric or a sketch of a front and a back. Into that dress you have to weave enough allure and mystery to excite and transform the most integral factor in making a dress unforgettable: the woman who is wearing it.

This book is a gallery of such dressmaking magic. As I look at these women and these unforgettable clothes, as I read the clever, devilish, and witty ways these fantasies came true, I feel as though I am looking at a very special family album, one that revels in the joy, happiness, and desire we inspire in others when we triumph in creating moments of memorable beauty.

There is nothing more frightening in fashion than being of the moment because its a heightened state that doesnt last. But here are moments that will never fade, forever shining bright in our collective memory, each the result of enviable imagination, canny intuition, fortuitous timing, a little bit of luck, and the willingness to feel free and fearless. And as 100 Unforgettable Dresses reveals, such fearlessness may be the secret of true beauty.

Alber Elbaz

Designer and dressmaker

Twenty years ago, I was sitting in my office at the New York Times when I heard the unmistakable clatter of Carrie Donovans Bakelite Chanel bracelets approaching my doorway. It was rare for the newspapers legendary deputy editor of style to venture up three floors from her comparatively plush domain to my spartan yet cluttered one-man-band warren, where I worked as the mens style editor of the august daily.

My dear Hal, I have the most marvelous surprise for you! declared Carrie in her emphatically musical, slightly adenoidal voice as she handed me an airline ticket to Milan to attend the opening of the fall 1991 womens ready-to-wear collections. Having just returned from that same citys fall mens presentations, I was confused. At the time, I didnt cover womens fashion, nor did I even care about it that much, and I told her so.

The doyenne lifted her eyebrows high above her trademark oversize black round-rim glasses and proclaimed with her trademark effusiveness, Thats ridiculous! Of course, you do! Everybody does! Besides, I dont like Milan, so you must go! Further protests proved futile, as Donovan blew off each one with a hand wave that wiped my future clean. Im opening a door for you! she insisted with Auntie Mame logic. You will adore womens fashion! Its just too divine! So much more fun, full of imagination, detailsoh, the detailsits so dramatic! Besides, women love clothes so much more than men, which is why what they wear makes such a difference. Then, waving good-bye over her shoulder, her bracelets a-clatter, my self-appointed mentor walked away, singing out, Bon voyage, my dear! I cant wait for a full report!

Naturally, when it came to style, Carrie was absolutely right about everything. Womens fashion is a culturally pervasive, behavior-altering, trend-inducing, emotion-stirring, perpetually exhausting, psychologically daring, hopefully uplifting yet potentially scarring, and occasionally foolish but undeniably influential celebration of craftsmanship, showmanship, ego, and seduction that has us more riveted and more attuned to its output and our appearances than ever before.

Its not that past generations didnt take equal notice, but today we thrive on both the recognition of fashions immediate ability to shape our self-images and our enlightened awareness of the way past examples of significant design affected the way women dressed, as well as how society perceived them.

100 Unforgettable Dresses celebrates this remarkable power by citing those gowns, minis, muumuus, shifts, shirtwaists, sheaths, costumes, and beaded extravaganzas that sparked unforgettable collective memories and are directly responsible for changing how women wanted to look. This is not a historical compendium so you can be better informed the next time you go to the museum. Instead, this is a book for all fashion enthusiasts, movie buffs, music fans, celebrity watchers, backstage story snoops, gossip lovers, die-hard shoppers, and pop culture mavens who guiltlessly admit they cant get enough of these indelible, once-in-a-lifetime moments.

Its amazing that one feathered dress helped shape the most memorable number of the screens greatest dance team, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Its a rush to discover that a fabric developed for automobile upholstery became the source for Halstons most famous creation. And although many people may not remember what film she won her Best Actress Oscar for (The Hours), no red-carpet watcher can forget the immediate and stunning effect of a copper-tressed young Nicole Kidman in a commanding chartreuse chinoiserie Dior gown. Fashions calendar of shows may be fixed years in advance, but its landmark eventssuch as Alexander McQueen revealing the final dress for one of his presentations as a hologram, or Jason Wu discovering Michelle Obama had selected his design for her inaugural-ball gown only by actually seeing her appear on television, or Marilyn Monroe entertaining President John F. Kennedy in a second skin of sequinswere all unexpected, serendipitous delights.

What movie lovers can ever take their eyes off of Audrey Hepburn in any film, let alone the panoramic tableau of black-and-white costumes in the Ascot scene in My Fair Lady? But the great designer Cecil Beaton did more than rely on Hepburns beauty. With one design trick, he made sure youd focus only on her. Yves Saint Laurents trend-defining Mondrian dress was not a simple shift but a marvel of subtle infrastructure. Rita Hayworths black gown in Gilda ignited every would-be sirens reliance on a strapless dress, but besides Hayworths knowing how to dance or slither, there was something special that Jean Louis crafted inside her gown so she would not be prone to hiking it up the way so many young stars tend to when they walk the red carpet.

Digging into fashions past proved an intoxicating treasure hunt. Who was responsible for the Supremes psychedelic glamour? Where did Valentino find his trademark red? How did several strategic safety pins make one beauty world famous overnight? Did you know that the most infamous red-carpet outfit ever worn didnt cause a single eye flutter when it was first shown on the Versace runway, that Bette Daviss classic hostess gown in All About Eve didnt really fit her properly, or that televisions most uproarious movie parody costume barely made it onto the set of The Carol Burnett Show?

100 Unforgettable Dresses is a work of sheer selfishness because every entry either spurred me to smack my lips, roll my eyes, connect a dot, jolt to a delicious flashback, or flick on a light of recognition. Equally thrilling for a populist like me, these dresses prove that fashion doesnt merely live on a runway. It insinuates itself everywhere in our daily lives and then works its way into our daydreams. These one hundred selections shaped the way women dressed for proms, job interviews, and their own weddings. They set standards and broke them, established concepts of sexiness, hipness, and elegance. They are an essential element of certain red-letter days. And they disprove that beauty is restricted to the eye of the beholder, because its really a group effort.