18th Century Gowns

By M&M, on March 8th, 2009

Maria-Luisa (dite Coré) House of Dior All The Costume Institute Collection Database Works of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Maria Luisa Black Silk Taffeta gown by Galliano for Dior has got to be one of the most stunning gowns that have been made. This dress, which is known as the Maria Luisa, is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's website describes it as:

‘In this design, John Galliano for Dior combined the elements of a robe à la française with the vast crinolined silhouettes of the mid-nineteenth century. The stomacher, open overskirt, and petticoat are expressly eighteenth century, but the huge wired cages that support the skirts over nine feet wide are constructed more like the hoops of the Second Empire than the discrete by comparison panniers of the ancien régime. While the eighteenth-century woman could at least sidle through a doorway, Galliano’s beauties, because of the depths of their skirts, would have to torque and deform their hoops to squeeze their way through.’