L'Aiglon fruit print dress - Late 1950s

Polished cotton printed shirt dress/new Look style dress with short sleeves, button closure and matching self trim narrow belt
1950s
Philadelphia, USA
By ‘L’Aiglon’
Fine polished cotton shirt dress/new look style dress. Button closure down front of dress, machine stitched button holes, short sleeves with cuffs, matching self-fabric belt and a classic v collar neckline. The pleating on the waistband creates a full skirt effect. The wide hem is machine stitched as are the pleats on bodice that give a fitted, corseted effect. The dress is unlined. The motif has been roller printed. It references hand-coloured lithographs of the same subject matter from the 18th and 19th centuries. Graphic prints were especially popular in the late Fifties into the Sixties due to mechanised flatbed printing introduced in the 50s that allowed for more detailed and complicated patterns to be printed sharply.

Other Information
L’Aiglon was founded in 1919 in Philadelphia as part of Biberman Brothers, Inc. The company’s original label read “Biberman Make” but changed in 1919 to “L’Aiglon”. On those early labels you will find “Biberman Make” in small letters. Biberman Make dresses were “wash dresses”, or washable. “Tubable” was the word of the era. Biberman also made bathrobes and uniforms for maids and nurses.
Its founder, Joseph Biberman, committed suicide in 1933 as a result of financial difficulties during the Great Depression. The company, however, survived, and continued to make inexpensive but stylish and attractive dresses for women and juniors. During the 1950s, L’Aiglon dresses were used as costumes on the soap opera, The Edge of Night. The company produced dresses until about 1968.
Written by Lizzie Bramlett, fuzzylizzie.com
Source: http://vintagefashionguild.org/label-resource/laiglon/
(Examples of L’Aiglon labels are viewable on this web page)
http://www.digitalfabrics.com.au/fabric-printing-little-bit-of-history/
‘Textile Designs” by Susan Meller and Joost Elfers, Thames and Hudson