Worn daily for decades by everyone from rural women to movie stars, the house dress has a multi-faceted fashion personality which runs the gamut from house work to breezy summer activities to star turns in fabulous Italian films where it was worn by Silvana the rice-weeder (Riso amaro), a stereotypically erotic housemaid (Malizia), and almost exclusively by Volver's Irene. More recently, designers including Pucci, Roberta di Camerino, and Diane von Furstenberg have also continued to reinterpret and riff off it. Now, this historically underrated piece of fashion history is finally getting its due within the larger fashion canon in The House Dress (Marsilio/Rizzoli New York, January 2009), in which author Elda Danese covers traces its rise and ensuing success over a period spanning the 1920s to the present through archival photography, movies, and recent runway shots. The House Dress: A Story of Eroticism and Fashion is available at Amazon.com.
- Lesley Scott
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