V&A to take a new look at Dior's decade

It was one of the most glamorous decades in fashion history. After years of rationing and wartime austerity, the dramatic dresses of Christian Dior signalled a return to luxury and elegance.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the movement dubbed the New Look, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is to mount an exhibition on this golden age of couture. The show will feature more than 100 dresses, including some thought long lost, to explore the extraordinary world of the fashion houses who dressed the ladies of society.

Alongside Dior, the exhibition will feature work by his contemporaries including Cristobal Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy and Pierre Balmain in Paris and Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies, the royal dressmakers of London.

From 1947 to 1957 was "Dior's decade," according to curator, Claire Wilcox, who announced details of the show yesterday.

"He created a commercial model and a creative model that dominated the decade. This was the zenith of couture," she said.

Couture accounted for about 5 per cent of French exports and not much less in Britain, but was eventually superseded by the quick availability of ready-to-wear in the Sixties.

Among the exhibit's highlights will be a Zemire evening jacket and skirt which was one of Dior's most distinctive designs from 1954, but of which no example was previously thought to have survived. A red version of the skirt, which research has shown probably belonged to society hostess Gloria Guinness was found in a cellar by the river Seine in Paris and bought by the V&A at auction last year.

Another discovery is a blue cloak by Givenchy almost identical to that worn by Audrey Hepburn in the film Funny Face.

Archive footage will include Stafford Cripps as director of the Board of Trade insisting the New Look must be ignored for fear it would "encourage women to be frivolous". His successor, Harold Wilson, was more resigned to women buying such skirts but insisted: "They're just going to have to have fewer of them."

Photographs by Cecil Beaton and Richard Avedon will also go on display, including famous images such as Dovima, one of the first supermodels, posing in front of two elephants. Each couture house had its own models at this time as part of the publicity machine which promoted the changing fashion styles.

Many of the cocktail dresses and ballgowns in the V&A collection are there thanks to Beaton, who persuaded his society friends to donate hundreds of them in 1971.

Dresses worn by the Duchess of Windsor, the Duchess of Devonshire and the ballerina Margot Fonteyn as well as members of the Royal Family will feature in the exhibition.

And although couture has never achieved such dizzy heights in the decades since, the show will conclude with dresses by John Galliano from his 2005-06 collection for Dior which incorporated embroidery and handcraftsmanship in a clear tribute to the master.

Betty Jackson, the designer and a V&A trustee, said the exhibition would tell "a special story of beauty and brand-building and of craft and commerce mixing together". Mark Jones, the V&A's director, said this was an important show for the museum. "Fashion is very much the heart of what the V&A is."

The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957 will run from 22 September to 6 January with full-price admission £9.