What:
Abstract or Four-Leaf Clover Evening Gown
Label: none
Authenticated as a Charles James design because of the dress' construction and its provenance.

Where:
716 Madison Avenue, New York

When:
First created in 1953 and produced until 1957

Who:
Made for Austine Hearst (Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, Jr.) (1918-1991) to wear to the Eisenhower Inaugural Ball in 1953. A fashion columnist for the Washington Times-Herald until 1956, Austine (née McDonnell Cassini) was a client of James since he opened his salon in 1945. She told Marguery Bolhagen, a dressmaker she employed and the recipient of the gown, that she "hated the dress" for it was not comfortable and would not fit in the elevator of her Fifth Avenue apartment in New York. According to Bolhagen, the 5'8" long-waisted Mrs. Hearst was James' best model and received gowns for her services, paying only for her wedding dress ($800). This contradicts the prices listed for many of Mrs. Hearst's gowns in Elizabeth Ann Coleman's The Genius of Charles James, in which fourteen of James' evening gowns were linked to her, including her 1948 wedding dress. In any case, this Hearst-James connection surely contributed to her inclusion in the World's Best Dressed Women list from the year of her marriage and for fourteen years thereafter. According to her 1991 obituary, she was made a permanent member of the list in 1962.

How:
The bodice and upper part of the skirt are made of ivory silk satin interfaced with ivory cotton muslin. The upper skirt is also interfaced with horsehair canvas and stiff bobbinet tulle. Black silk velvet is joined by hand to the upper and lower pieces. The lower hem section is made of ivory silk faille interfaced with yellowed non-woven Pellon® and stiff white bobbinet tulle, covered with an ivory silk faille inner facing. The visible layers at the bodice cover a peach-colored silk satin lining boned eleven times and extending below the waist level. The dress closes with a center back zipper. At some point, the gown was severely altered and possibly taken apart and suffered flood damage at the hem. A new understructure was created in 2007 by Gayle Strege and Joycelyn Falsken to replicate the effect of the original three-layered understructure observed at the Brooklyn Museum.

Credit:
The Ohio State University Historic Costume & Textiles Collection
Purchased in 1988 from Marguery Bolhagen
OSU 1988.318.140

For more on the OSU Collection, log on to costume.osu.edu