Felt has a reputation as a textile for winter woollies and rarely referred to as glamorous or sexy. Yet this is just not true! In Australia we have become very adept at making light, fine felt and nuno that is wearable even during our summers. Many of our talented feltmakers produce elegant and stylish clothing all of types but seldom evening gowns. My project has been to produce a collection of elegant, glamorous and sexy evening gowns made from felt and silk. I planned to create one for each decade of the twentieth Century.

As I began to research the gowns, two things stood out as warranting further investigation. Firstly, after the mid sixties, evening gowns went out of fashion. During the late sixties and throughout the seventies evening fashion became faddish and trendy, rebelling against the conservative establishment and trying in earnest to be modern. Functions that previously required formal evening attire diminished and the opportunity to wear glamorous clothes faded away. The eighties saw a return to the glam look but it was with recycled ideas and styles from previous eras, like the exaggerated shoulder pads straight-out of the forties. The nineties were filled with an anything goes attitude and outrageous attempts to have that ‘new’ look. By the turn of the new century we see more and more Hollywood stars returning to vintage couture, as their choice for gala events, or at least gowns designed on styles that echo the first half of the twentieth century.

Secondly, that haute couture and; the decorative arts, magazines, the theatre, vaudeville shows and eventually film, have strutted and vogued down the business catwalk, manicured hand in designer glove since the 1860s. Product placement is thought to be a modern invention, commonplace in contemporary television and film, but was invented by the fashion industry who had perfected it by the turn of the twentieth century. By the early 1900s most haute couture houses had a company of models that were dressed in the latest collection and sent to: the races, the opera, art exhibitions, the theatre, the best restaurants in Paris, and any other events were the privileged and wealthy attended. Fashions were even displayed in the foyers of theatres.

The Folies Bergére became the indicator as to which direction the couture houses would follow. A classic example was the play "Rue du la Paix", with its flimsy plot as an excuse to parade models through a sequence of scenes displaying Paul Iribe’s designs created by Jeanne Paquin. It was universally slammed by critics and lampooned by theatre goers but was highly successful with wealthy socialite women of the time.

Paul Poiret was the first to film one of his shows for screening throughout the world, thus enabling him to travel further abroad and reducing his costs considerably. All of the haute couture houses had intimate links with magazine illustrators of the time, in fact many designers were trained illustrators and attended the Écoles du Beaux-Arts . In conjunction with magazines of the day like Gazette du Bon Ton and Les Modes the fashion houses steered popular taste in clothing and home décor.