NEW YORK — Some dresses you remember: Michelle Obama’s inaugural gown, Coco Chanel’s little black dress, Cher’s Oscar getups. They make an impression on the collective culture beyond a fleeting fashion trend.
InStyle fashion director Hal Rubenstein counts down his favorites in a new book called “100 Unforgettable Dresses.”
“Dresses are important for different reasons, but how they are unified is that they are not all simply about fashion. They hit us emotionally, psychologically or affect how we perceive beauty,” he says.
A great dress also can jump-start a career, he says, and that’s not just limited to fashion. Michelle Obama’s white, one-shouldered gown for the inaugural balls literally made Jason Wu a household name overnight, but stars as diverse as Phyllis Diller and Elizabeth Hurley parlayed a splash of style into celebrity.
Hurley in Gianni Versace’s safety-pin gown in 1994 for the premiere of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” is the first dress featured in the book — which is “not quite” random order, Rubenstein says.
“The Versace safety-pin dress is the greatest example of the power of clothing. It made a woman famous overnight. Elizabeth Hurley was a pretty girl on Hugh Grant’s arm who no one knew. The next day it was, ‘Who’s that girl?”’
Modern A-listers Sarah Jessica Parker and Cate Blanchett join the late style icons Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy and Grace Kelly as women who successfully made fashion part of their identity, he says. They show a deep understanding of fashion without ever seeming burdened by it, he describes.
Kennedy figured out how to use clothing as a political tool. With her appearance in France at Versailles in 1961 in an ivory gown with floral beading all over the bodice by Hubert de Givenchy, she changed the world’s perception of how a new generation of Americans might dress.
“She knew how to present a picture,” Rubenstein says.
Every dress in the book tells a story, and that’s why, at 35,000 words, it’s more for reference than the coffee table, Rubenstein says.
“It’s not called the ‘100 Most Beautiful Dresses’ or ‘100 Most Fashionable Dresses.’ Three-quarters of these have been stuck in my head my whole life. I didn’t need to find the 100 dresses, 75 of them just showed up in just a couple of minutes after I had the idea,” he says.
Without context, the conversation becomes about clothes, not fashion, he says. He wants to use his voice at the magazine and in this book to remind women that their wardrobes, and especially the dresses selected for special moments, really reflect time, place and personality.
Sometimes, though, you don’t know how big a statement you’re making if you don’t take a moment or two to step away. “We’re breeding and raising a generation of people who don’t look back. I want people to know about the amazing things that happened before today.”
Rubenstein includes some “behind the seams” stories:
Designer Jean Louis knew he was making a sparkly sexy dress for Marilyn Monroe. He used 2,500 beads and sequins, a clear zipper and up to 20 layers of sheer frothy fabric.
What he didn’t know when he delivered it after more than a month in the making is that she’d wear it to sing “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy in 1962 and that he’d help create one of the most enduring images of her as a shining star.
Princess Diana’s “revenge” dress, worn in the summer of 1994, stole the thunder from a TV interview in which Prince Charles admitted marital infidelities. The next day, Diana’s picture was splashed on front pages wearing an off-the-shoulder, short black dress by London boutique owner Christina Stambolian that she had stashed in her closet for three years, waiting for the right occasion.
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