The Revolving Door: Goddess Style

Plaster female figure draped in silk jersey, designed to resemble classical Greek peplumed dress, for the 1939 World's Fair

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Watching the red carpet during this year’s Golden Globes coverage, it was hard not to notice that many female celebrities are opting for classical, Grecian-style gowns – gowns that feature elemental geometric forms draped softly from the shoulders and around the body’s natural contour. Most are densely pleated around the torso and manipulated to shape the woman’s natural form. Some are simple panels of the finest luxury fabric, cut on the bias and left to hang effortlessly from one shoulder or two. When actresses like Debra Messing, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Jennifer Aniston, already supernovas of our society, arrive at the Emmys or the Golden Globes dressed in these classical confections, they take on additional personas of mythic beauties and love goddesses.

The classical mode, hardly new to the world of fashion, is based on three ancient garments: the chiton, a dress consisting of two rectangular pieces of fabric sewn along the sides and pinned at the top to form shoulders; the peplos, a single piece of fabric curved around the body, fastened at the top with clasps called fibulae, and worn with a cuff made by folding over the topline; and the himation, a scarf, shawl, mantle, or large cloak made from a single rectangular piece of fabric. These three garments are what 1930s fashion designers, including Madame Grès and Madeleine Vionnet, used as inspiration for their modern designs.

A model,wearing crepe romain pajamas by Vionnet, strikes a classical pose.

The French designer Madeleine Vionnet was best known for introducing the bias cut to the world of fashion. The bias, achieved by cutting or draping cloth on a diagonal, provides an additional elasticity to the fabric. The resulting garments cling to the body and accentuate the natural female form. The wrap-style gown above, photographed by George Hoyningen-Huené, shows a particularly innovative dress design that fuses both the chiton and himation into a single gown. What would have been the himation, or mantle, has morphed into a narrow, continuous piece of cloth, wrapping around the torso and leaving long scarves in back.

Mrs. Francis A. Wyman wearing a short ermine jacket, with unidentified model standing to her right wearing a bias-cut, wrap-style satin gown with fox-trimmed sleeves

Mrs. Leo d’Erlanger wears a long gathered white chiffon dress by Alix (later Madame Grès)

Madame Grès was world-renowned for her pleated silk jersey gowns, designed without cutting fabric or pattern-shaping, just as ancient Greeks constructed their garments. Instead, she depended on draping and pleating fabric to achieve her desired effects. In the photograph above, a fashion model is dressed in one of Madame Grès’s handkerchief-weight draped creations and resembles a fluted Greek marble column. A similar dress, pictured below, sheds that linear sculptural iconography of antiquity and takes on more romantic connotations of classicalism when photographed outdoors. In this instance, the wind presses her gown against her body in a way that sensually reveals her feminine contours. And, as if she has materialized out of classical literature, she reaches towards the heavens with an extended arm like a triumphant goddess.

Zorina, prima ballerina of the George Balanchine Company, posing on a Chirico horse statue

Photography is capable of further alluding to the goddess-figure with dramatic lighting and a natural, timeless-looking landscape, as the image below shows. Here, somewhat voyeuristically, we the viewers are privileged to glimpse a creature of divine female beauty in a private moment, even if only temporarily.

Mrs. Allan A. Ryan, Jr., standing in silhouette near a body of water, in Palm Beach, Florida

Model wearing long one shouldered silk gown by Grès, in the mirrored hall at Fontainebleau

In the 1950s, fashion saw a return to cinched waists, petticoats, and hip padding. Simultaneously, fashion was experiencing a classical revival in dress, reminiscent of 1930s glamour. Madame Grès, who had championed the ability to shape a dress without pattern-cutting, adapted her work to fit the fashionable post–World War II “wasp-waist” silhouette. She did this by simply tacking her intricate pleats to a stiff under-bodice.

Model wearing white chiffon dress, banded at the waist to convey classical girdle techniques, and worn with mantle by Gunther Jaeckel

Model posing in the Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur, wearing an Egyptian-inspired beige dinner dress by Omar Kiam

The 1960s heralded an exciting time. As never before, sexual freedom and the civil rights movement pushed art, music, fashion, and society to the limits. And for the first time, designers were creating looks that matched young people’s enthusiasm. Vogue was bursting with brightly colored pages showing miniskirts, ultra-miniskirts, transparent PVC clothing, topless bathing suits, and sheer chiffon confections. As seen in the photographs below, women’s easier attitude toward nudity helped transform these much-reduced versions of the himation into a teasing, taunting garment of love and seduction.

Model in Göreme, Turkey, wearing an orange and blue printed evening dress with matching scarf by Pauline Trigère

model Veruschka posing in a blue body-veil in the Gardens of Mandor, India.