This dress, which is known as the Maria Luisa, is held in the
collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
‘In this design, John Galliano for Dior combined the elements of a
robe à la française with the vast crinolined silhouettes of the
mid-nineteenth century. The stomacher, open overskirt, and petticoat
are expressly eighteenth century, but the huge wired cages that support
the skirts over nine feet wide are constructed more like the hoops of
the Second Empire than the discrete by comparison panniers of the
ancien régime. While the eighteenth-century woman could at least sidle
through a doorway, Galliano’s beauties, because of the depths of their
skirts, would have to torque and deform their hoops to squeeze their
way through.’
The Maria Luisa Black Silk Taffeta gown by Galliano for Dior has got to be one of the most stunning gowns that have been made.
