"Venus" Evening Gown

Christian Dior's "Venus" is realized in the smoky, eighteenth-century gray that was his signature color. The bodice and the shell forms of its skirt are embellished with nacreous paillettes, sequins, and pearls, suggesting both the seashell motif and the crescent-wave patterns of Botticelli's Birth of Venus (1485). After World War II, Dior reintroduced the wasp waist of the Belle Epoque -- a silhouette predicated on the corset -- to a public starved for the fantasy of a more gracious time. In this design, the strapless bodice is heavily boned. For Dior, beauty resided in artifice. "I dream" he once wrote, "of rescuing women from nature."