Cocktail dress

Bonnie Cashin created award-winning clothing known for its casual comfort. As the daughter of a dressmaker, she was exposed to textiles and fashion nearly from birth and began designing professionally in 1925, at age 17. Prior to establishing her own company in 1951, she designed for Adler & Adler and Twentieth Century-Fox. Thereafter she worked with manufacturers such as Sills and Co. and Coach to offer fashion and accessories in every price bracket. She was adept at manipulating organic components into modern basics which could easily be mixed, matched and layered for the active woman. Her brightly colored leather trim, metallic toggle hardware and shaped knits are still a recognizable trademark of her work today. In 1962 the Brooklyn Museum, with her assistance and donations, staged, "Bonnie Cashin Presents Her Living Sketch Book," which was a retrospective of her work. Cashin's forethought to preserve her past while still designing is one which makes her work still accessible today.

Cashin's 1953 collections were primarily composed of vividly-colored full leather garments such as this one. The expansive amount of leather in the skirt extended from a Cashin-style cantilevered hip yoke shows the splendor and significance of the material at the time. The use of leather as a primary component was trendy in both fashion and interior decorating in the 1950s and few accomplished the panache that Cashin demonstrates in this garment alone.