Prêt-à-Porter: How Women Modernized Fashion after World War II

Women’s History Salon, New York Historical Society

7 October 2022, 6-7PM

Skylight Gallery at the New-York Historical Society

170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024

World War II rattled the French fashion industry. Famous for its rarefied couture houses, Paris was mostly shut down while New York’s designers were propelling their city to the top of the fashion’s capitals by creating dynamic wardrobes of “separates:” ready-to-wear garments that could be mixed and matched. After the war, influenced by New York’s sportswear industry, a new cohort of French designers and consumers revolutionized their own industry by increasingly shifting focus to ready-to-wear fashion. At the same time a new, innovative approach to fashion photography transformed how fashion was presented and consumed globally. 


Join Alexis Romano, author of Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women, and Keren Ben-Horin, Curatorial Scholar of Women’s History for a conversation exploring the postwar readymade industry, situating it in a wider perspective on postwar development of art, design, urbanism, and technology.

For more details and to register please visit: www.nyhistory.org/programs/pret-a-porter