IF THE DAZZLING dress — the item of the season — were a building, what would it be? Easy. It would be the Chrysler Building, an ostentatious, shiny monument to the power of imagination and the infinite possibilities of what man can make. Around the Chrysler’s birth in 1930, the brittle sophistication of the Twenties collided with the sensuous swoop of the coming decade — and by 1939 had created fashion’s most glamorous 29 years.
The best kind of dressing is when clothes are allowed to exist for delight and pleasure alone. An indulgent concept, but just as meaningful then as now; perhaps only when the restrictive carapace of wartime frugality was lifted could the joy of sequin-covered velvet and emeralds around the throat really be embraced. It’s probably the only historical period that can be plundered without any risk of anachronism.
Art Deco — from architecture and art to fashion and jewellery — was about the joy of being able to play with things that until recently had been thought to be necessarily functional — whether dresses, buildings or teapots. Luxury and preciousness were cultivated for their own sake; the mood was deliberately decorative and ornate. In 1938, before the period’s decadence flipped over into Forties austerity, Vogue featured a gown made entirely of hardened molten gold; in Bringing Up Baby the year before Katharine Hepburn insisted that she would wear only a metallic evening dress by Howard Greer.
In fact, Art Deco dresses varied dramatically, from the beaded and fringed Charleston dress to Vionnet’s draped neo-classical evening dresses to Chanel’s classic little black dress (which became known as the Chanel “Ford” — “the dress that all the world will wear”). The many lovely dresses around at the moment make a convincing case for bringing back the after-five soirée. Most either sit either a few inches above the knee or they hit the floor and cascade for half a foot.
The shorter options echo the flippant flapperness of bright young things with audacious habits (cf Waugh, etc). There’s New Look’s green slip with jewelled details on the bust (as seen here), and Peter Som’s crunchily glittery shifts designed for the downing of Martinis. At the other end of the new dress spectrum are the glittering skyscrapers of dresses. Vintage shops and eBay are a good source for original numbers, or look to Roberto Cavalli, whose plunging playboy-seeking Deco-ish dresses have a Studio 54 feel to them. The young Manhattan upstart Zac Posen (now at Browns in London) has an archaically meticulous knowledge of the ideal construction of a dress; he pulls fabric around the body’s curves to sinewy and slinky effect and his patterns echo the long neo-classical gowns worn on lawns and in hotel bars in the late Thirties.
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When it’s a skirt and a top, the feel is still the pulled-together and ceremonial feel of the dress. Use the two (or three pieces) to maximise the opportunity to overgild; if it seems that prints and textures might jar, the likelihood is that they’ll work brilliantly — take DKNY’s bronze tunic, which goes perfectly with Principles’ black-ribboned skirt.
The silhouette, then and now, is restrained and streamlined, hinting at excess beneath its pared-down lines. There are many prints around that echo the curved doorway of the Savoy Grill in the Twenties (at Topshop) and the bonnet of a Cadillac Coupé (Prada). Colours often clash, and are all the better for it: gunmetal grey, plum, violet, teal, midnight blue, emerald green, navy, and metallics such as pewter and bronze.
An element of fun and excess is key, and the mood is self- consciously decadent. Consider something unexpected — perhaps a jacket made entirely of marabou feathers (go to Accessorize or fleamarkets) — and remember the fabulous Daisy Fay “drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids” in The Great Gatsby.
Jewellery is angular but sleek, and completely unapologetic: a cocktail ring or a heavy brooch, or a choker-effect necklace like those once created by Cartier, whose modern-day Tank watches have Deco’s curved, clean lines.
A whimsical touch — a leopardprint belt, a jewel-pasted cuff, a wide satin bow — is good. Choose a treasure of a bag that makes you forget it could ever be useful (even if it is). Bottega Veneta has a new and stupendous line of bags, each one inspired by an iconic piece of Manhattan architecture.
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Of course, there’s the gold and silver “Chrysler” bag, a half-moon affair in cashmere and python; there’s also the “Deco” clutch and the “International”, a sac homage to NY’s mid-century steel-and-glass constructions (the Seagram, Lever House). And, of course, the Manhattan, based on the colourful grid of Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie and with black crocodile-skin inserts intended to echo the shiny dark of the city’s wet pavements. Daisy Fay would have loved that detail.