Dressmaking & Tailoring
Dressmaking & Tailoring: The Hybrid
For more than a century, haute couture houses divided their workrooms into two main areas
in order to keep dressmaking and tailoring distinct from one another. Americans, lacking so
structured a system, were foremost in blurring the lines between the two disciplines as they
began to meld together elements of both in the creation of a single, hybrid garment.
Pauline Trigère was a pioneer of the hybrid. Her cream-colored
evening coat has tailored elements, such as fitted, set-in sleeves;
however, the body of the coat is draped entirely on the bias, or
oblique angle, a challenging dressmaking technique. Trigère
deftly inserted vertical fit seams against the bias, but
simultaneously highlighted it by insetting perfectly rendered
buttonholes that lie along the grain.
