BRIGHT PINK OSTRICH FEATHER DRESS WITH SEQUIN ACCENTS, RHINESTONE BRACELET

1975-79, Designer: Jean Louis, Gift of Roberta Olden

Rogers’ bright pink feather gown is a second interpretation of her iconic blue feather dress from Top Hat (1935) for her 1970s nightclub revue. Rogers asked designer Jean Louis to create both light and bright feather dresses in her favorite color: pink, a color that, during the 1930s, underwent a ‘shocking’ transformation to which Rogers visually links with her own 1970s bright pink dress!

Bright pink was introduced as a fashion color by Elsa Schiaparelli, pioneering Surrealist designer, in 1937, as ‘shocking pink,’ a vibrant shade compared to many of the demure pale pinks that dominated the period. ”The violent hue was startling, overt – femininity as warfare. It represented a woman who was liberated and sexually brazen, the kind of woman Schiaparelli wanted to dress” (Byland, Veronique. Dress Code (2023) 82-83).  Legendary fashion editor Bettina Ballard wrote, “she [Schiaparelli} changed the outline of fashion from soft to hard, from vague to definite.” In her 1954 autobiography, Schiaparelli herself called the color “life giving like all the light and the birds and the fish in the world put together, a color of China and Peru but not of the West.”  The color quickly caught on beyond its creator and became a sort of bombshell plumage, the color of Marilyn Monroe’s dress in Gentleman Prefer Blondes, as she stood silhouetted against a group of men dressed in black tuxedos. Rogers utilized this color in her later career to help audiences visually connect her own pioneering career of the 1930s to her present-day revue.