Date: c. 1930s-1940s
Origin: France
Fabric: Cotton machine-made lace
Brand: Aux Trois-Quartiers
This French-made nightgown bodice insert, sold at Aux Trois-Quartiers, epitomizes 20th-century innovations in women’s fashions. It was made circa 1930-40s. The use of machine-made lace, indicated by the label which reads “dentelle mechanique,” reflects the growing adoption of industrial production in interwar fashion by the textile industry.
By the 1940s, lace inserts were commonly advertised in publications such as Women’s Wear Daily as an attractive, lacey addition to the silk satin and synthetic, otherwise streamlined undergarments of the period. In 1949, WWD highlighted a “vertically tucked bodice insert framed with Val-type lace (a kind of bobbinet lace) straps.”
The tag sewn onto the insert reads “Aux Trois Quartiers Paris,” the name of an upscale Parisian department store once located on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, suggesting it was to be sold at this luxury retail outlet. Designed to be incorporated into women’s nightwear, especially negligees, this piece displays the interplay between cinematic glamour and shifting ideals of femininity in 1930s-1940s France.
From the collection of Karolina Laskowska.
Many thanks to Liv Elniski for the object description and research.
