Charles James built a ten pound ball gown you could waltz in
Fashion's engineer, on the record. The Clover Leaf ball gown of 1953: 10 pounds, 30 pattern pieces, boning, nylon mesh and horsehair, the weight carried on the hips so the wearer could dance. Austine Hearst commissioned it for the Eisenhower Inaugural Ball in January 1953 and James couldn't finish it in time. Back in 1937 he'd made a white satin evening jacket filled with down, built like an eiderdown bed quilt, then pitched mass versions for ski wear and motorbikes. No formal training, roughly a thousand designs in forty years, and $20,000 of his backers' money once went into perfecting a single sleeve. Dior (@dior) credited the New Look to a James idea; Balenciaga (@balenciaga) called him America's greatest couturier.