Christian Dior's 1951 Wedding Dress: An Analysis Fashion is often seen as a reflection of how a culture views sexuality, in particular female sexuality. With the introduction of Christian Dior's New Look, "practicality went out the window" and "ultra-feminine curves" became the dominant silhouette. [footnoteRef:1] More than hemlines had changed, however. American culture was also undergoing a seismic revolution as servicemen began to return home and start families in record numbers. The Baby Boom had begun as well as an era of economic prosperity for the United States was in full swing. This was reflected in clothing design as well: the gender binaries which had existed before the war reasserted themselves; before women began to work in classically 'male' occupations due to the shortage of able-bodied male workers at home. The shift in social expectations as women were often forcibly removed from these better-paying positions was reflected in the styles of the era. [1: Jennifer Croll, Fashion that Changed the World, (Prestel, 2014), p. 17]

But one of the most famous New Look dresses was not worn by an American or a European at all. The Christian Dior wedding dress worn by the Empress of Iran, Shahbanu Soraya, in 1951 embodied virtually all of the classic features of the Dior 'New Look.' The dress featured a narrow, corseted waist and the figure of Soraya was even more extreme, given that she had recently survived a bout of typhoid fever. [footnoteRef:2] The skirt of the dress billowed out like a classic 'princess' ballroom dress of another century yet the top of the dress, once the delicate lace jacket was removed, featured a plunging neckline adorned with real feathers. The effect was simultaneously innocent yet sensual; opulent yet demure. These virginal yet sexual qualities were paradoxical, of course, but they summed up the aspirations embedded in the aesthetic of the New Look. While wedding dresses have traditionally made extravagant use of fabric, the very full, Victorian-style silhouette and layers of expensive fabric mark the dress as classic Dior. It celebrates its impracticality and the difficulty of wearing such a style rather than attempts to conceal it. [2: "Wedding Wednesday: Queen Soraya's Gown," Order of Splendor, 26 Oct 2011, http://orderofsplendor.blogspot.com/2011/10/wedding-wednesday-queen-sorayas-gown.html [6 Dec 21015]]

The New Look arose as reaction to the years of wartime austerity. During the 1940s and the era of Rosie the Riveter, women's fashions had become far more functional in design because of the need to conserve fabric for the war effort and because more women were working in manual labor jobs. Dior's New Look was characterized by an extravagant use of fabric and a hyper-fashionable feminine ideal. "It was a revelation of beauty and luxury, with long, full, fluid skirts, cinched-in waists and soft shoulders -- the antithesis of militaristic wartime fashions."[footnoteRef:3] While not all dresses were as extravagant as Soraya's gown, in comparison to the above-the-knee skirts and pants suits of the 1940s, even the most ordinary New Look gowns were decadent. [3: Alexandra Palmer, Dior: A New Look, a New Enterprise (1945-57), (V&A Publishing: 2009), p. 27. ]

Many women revolted against what they saw as a dangerous trend in fashion, just like many women resisted having to give up their jobs. There were petitions signed by feminists in protests against the confining nature of the Dior design. "In Louisville, 1,265 women believed that the New Look was not only impractical but also anti-feminist, and signed an anti-Dior petition as members of The Little Below the Knee Club."[footnoteRef:4] Women reportedly had problems with the skirts getting caught in bus doors and even many men complained about the expense of the clothing. One magazine proclaimed: "In style-conscious Paris only models and wealthy society women could afford to wear it. The average woman preferred to buy food," suggesting that even 'good' wives would place their families' needs above frivolous fashion. [footnoteRef:5] [4: Palmer, p. 27] [5: Palmer, p. 27]

Although the level of fear and trembling with which the first New Look collection was met with might seem extreme, Dior himself was quite explicit about the fact that he designed the collection to promote a particular ideology. Dior's embrace of the New Look was tied to his beliefs about femininity. He viewed the role of women in wartime to be unnatural and the return of confining female clothing to be a reversion to correct gender norms. Along with spiraling reams of fabric, the style was also characterized by the traditional Victorian 'wasp' waist. "Dior himself welcomed...

The corsets, stockings, and elaborate methods of dressing epitomizing the New Look made it deliberately impractical for working women to dress in every morning, much less move around an office. "The New Look therefore played a powerful part in attempts to redefine women from paid workers in the public sphere to wives and mothers in the private sphere of home and family."[footnoteRef:7] Of course, the New Look and Dior were not responsible for such trends alone: the lack of protection for women from discrimination in employment and the end of wartime also were clearly factors in the manner in which gender was constructed in the 1950s. But fashion both mirrored these changing norms and also helped to reinforce them. [7: Brickell, p.246]
Of course, the question arises as to why women who were reluctant to wear the New Look did so. However, given the images in the media spanning from iconic actresses like Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe who adopted the style, to peer pressure from other women, it can be very difficult to resist a dominant fashion ideology. The New Look image of women such as Shahbanu Soraya lionized in the media, combined with the attention given to her wedding, further reinforced this construct. Soraya's fairy-tale like meeting with the Shah, who proposed to her with a 22.37 carat engagement ring after only one meeting made her as an aspirational figure, the Princess Diana of her era.[footnoteRef:8] While Shahbanu Soraya's wedding dress was obviously not intended to be worn for any function other than a wedding, its similarities are striking with the silhouette of the ideal Dior housewife. Soraya's extravagant gown only solidified her Cinderella status and the notion that every women's dream was to be saved by a handsome prince. Even today, many wedding dresses embody this fantasy of constraint in their mimicking a Victorian (or Dior) style but there is fortunately a distinct contrast between contemporary clothing designed for the office versus that of a wedding in the 21st century. [8: "Wedding Wednesday: Queen Soraya's Gown," 2011]

Like a wedding dress, even the everyday, off-the-rack New Look clothing was very explicitly unnatural in style. "Given that the wearing of New Look dresses often required a project of reshaping and/or restraint of the body, the fashion lends itself particularly well to a Foucauldian analysis of power, discipline and normalization, as reworked by feminist theorists."[footnoteRef:9] The New Look literally required reforming most women's bodies to be wearable. Many women complained that the New Look did not flatter their figure and questioned the emphasis on corsets and binding to produce the extreme, sharp curves of the body. Once again, the level of discomfort demanded by the new look raises the question why more women did not refuse to purchase it but social conformity in the 1950s was often emphasized as a positive value, versus self-expression through dress. [9: Brickell, p. 249]

Shahbanu Soraya's wedding gown was of course made to fit her but even so its sweeping skirts and tight jackets act as constraints. The gown's elaborate length and was said to have made it difficult for the still-recovering Soraya to move, despite its beauty. "Made of 37 yards of silver lame studded with pearls, 6,000 diamond pieces, and 20,000 marabou feathers, the creation weighed a whopping 44 pounds (20 kilograms)."[footnoteRef:10] Soraya was literally imprisoned in the gown the way many women felt imprisoned by the New Look. While the gown was an opulent statement of the wealth into which she was marrying as the second wife of the powerful Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Soraya was miserable wearing it. "Seeing her stagger, the Shah ordered a lady-in-waiting to take a pair of scissors to the priceless gown and cut the petticoats and train until she could walk again."[footnoteRef:11] The dress was specifically designed to give a fantastic, movie-star like quality to the bride and the wedding was carefully choreographed like a musical production for appearance not for comfort. "The strapless dress came with a matching jacket and veil for the ceremony itself as well as a full-length white mink cape ... In the evening, both jacket and veil were discarded and an emerald and…