Taking the New Look from the Catwalk to the High Street


This knitting pattern for a buttoned top by Lee Target has managed to attract a lot of comment from the moment I bought it from a charity shop in Horsforth, near Leeds. The lady on the till gasped at the model’s tiny waist. I then showed it on a couple of vintage fashion Facebook groups, partly because I had to do quite a lot of digital retouching of the original patters, which was quite badly damaged. An absurd argument broke out in the comments when I mentioned that the poor woman could probably hardly breathe due to the undergarments needed to squeeze her into such an unnatural shape.

Dior foundation garments to fit into the New Look

Self appointed experts came out of the digital woodwork to tell me that women were just thinner in the 1950s and 60s, thankfully countered by others sharing memories from relatives who were around at the time, and actually wore these type of clothes. One comment was especially insightful: “Looks like the Dior New Look inspiration that came after the Second World War. It harkened back to full skirts (or pencil skirts here) and pinched waist that had disappeared about 1919. My Mom was a 1950s girl and said she was shocked to see when corsetry returned a look her and her sister said was ‘as old as the ark’”.

The commenter raised the very subject that attracted me to the image in the first place: that this look illustrates perfectly the journey of Christian Dior’s revolutionary 1947 New Look from the catwalks of Paris to the high street, the very subject of this blog. 

Of course, most women had to resort to foundation wear which changed the shape of their bodies in order to replicate the fashionable new silhouette. This article from a 1962 article in The Tatler  gives the game away: “Basic items to mould your shape to the new form of fashion”. This was in the dying days of the Dior New Look's influence. It’s interesting to note that the illustrations for the article are by Barbara Hulanicki, just two years before she would found the iconic Biba store and brand that would help redefine fashion.

Although the model in the knitting pattern is wearing a pencil skirt, the New Look involved a large skirt, using lots of fabric and petticoats, and a tight bodice. In the immediate post-war period Dior’s designs were seen as shocking at a time of shortages and austerity, but they were quickly seen as a  liberation after six years of disastrous armed conflict.


The look dominated womens fashions for years to come and was eagerly adapted for the high street, often with the addition of bright colours and patterns. The silhouette of the New Look was co-opted, but altered in interesting ways for the needs of ordinary people working to a budget.



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