The Sheer Dress and the Older Woman

Found photo, “Mrs. Bryant and grandma Redford”

I’ve long been fascinated by older women in sheer dresses.  They seem paradoxical to me, revealing an older body shape at a time when many women like to disguise those extra pounds the years have brought.  But there is no doubting their popularity.  In fact, looking through Women’s Wear Daily I discovered that manufacturers designed sheer dresses specifically for this demographic.  “Navy runs sharply through this collection so that these so dark sheers have a new spring look for the mature customer for whom they were intended,” read one fashion report in late 1950.

Although not all sheer dresses for the older set were navy, it was a color often mentioned in fashion reports.  Perhaps the one above is a very dark blue, although in this photo it looks closer to black. What was the fabric? Sheer dresses were advertised in all kinds of textiles—silk, cotton, rayon, nylon, and a slew of other synthetics.

Had I judged this photo by the fashion alone, I would have probably guessed sometime in the 1950s.  But the shape of the photo itself tells a different story.  The snap shot is completely square, a telltale sign of the popular Kodak Instamatic camera.  It was not invented until 1963.  It’s just more proof that when older women find a style they love, they stick to it regardless of changing fashions.

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3 Responses to The Sheer Dress and the Older Woman

  1. ceci says:

    This must have been a visit in connection with an OCCASION given the corsage on the sheer dress lady. I remember old ladies in sheer dresses in my childhood and how fascinating they were. Assume there were some pretty substantial unders to keep things decent, but I don’t recall that part.

    Ceci

  2. Susan says:

    I remember that my Uncle Mel had a nylon, drip-dry shirt in the early 1950s. It was sheer enough to show his undershirt. My grandmother, his mother, also had at least one sheer dress, so possibly the promise of easy, “no iron” care made sheer nylon dresses popular with older ladies? The shirt and the dress had a texture similar to seersucker. I see many short-sleeved nylon shirts for men from Sears and Montgomery Ward offered on eBay.

  3. T Shepard says:

    I think she looks very elegant, and the sheer dress doesn’t mean revealing. Dresses in the early sixties could be very revealing, having low necklines. I remember some of my Mum’s.

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