
The strapless dress
The 30s were definitely the "strapless" years. In that decade the most prestigious fashion houses like Mainbocher made the strapless dress a trend but the actress Libby Holman has credit if not for its invention for being the pioneer starting the trend and wearing it as her distinctive, for hers is the first pic of a woman in a strapless dress in 1932.
The naked look they called it and was born to stay for a long time and turned crazy everybody for good although it raised the fury of the most conservatives sectors of the society that accused the strapless dress to be indecent, a garment from Hell.
And...while some were occupied thinking that the garment had a devilish plot, others were in heaven with Gilda, the iconic movie whose starr Rita Hayworth, as we all know, made a scandal by only taking off one of her gloves showing the world the wonders one can do with a strapless Jean Louis dress without falling down in a scene that was considered one of the ten best film fashion moments... "There never was a woman like Gilda" and neither like Amélie Avegno, the Madame X portraited by Sargent at the beginning of the Belle Epoque whose black thin strap dress is suposed to have inspired Jean Louis dress for Gilda. But, while Rita was worshiped the reputation of Amélie was destroyed for that "scandalous" portrait.
The strapless dress is a very sought style still for which in spanish have a different name "Palabra de honor" (word of honor). Some say that men gave their word of honor to not to step on the women dress, others say that is the gesture that the women do with their right hand to keep the dress from falling and a third version say that a model was afraid to end naked with the dress and the tailor gave his "word of honor" that the dress wouldn't fall although this version it's alleged too to a conversation between Eva Peron, great fan of these kind of dresses, and Franco.
Anyway, we could speak of fun facts of the strapless dress for lines and lines and still we would have more to talk because the strapless dress is still writing its history and maybe it will never stop.