Bath Fashion Museum Celebrates 50th Dress of the Year

The 50th Dress of the Year has been unveiled at the Bath Fashion Museum. Marking half a century of the prestigious international award.

Vanessa Friedman, Fashion Editor of the Financial Times, who choice the winning dress, selected a colourful embroidered and appliquéd silk cut-off ball gown worn with black slim trousers from the House of Dior in Paris.

The haute couture ensemble was created by Dior’s new head designer Raf Simons, who took over at the world’s oldest established fashion house last year to much acclaim.

Raf Simons said: “It is a great honour to have one of my debut Christian Dior Haute Couture collection’s looks chosen as Dress of the Year by Vanessa Friedman for the Fashion Museum. The way the museum’s collection is such a distinct document of not just fashion, but history in general, makes me proud that my clothes can feature amongst those looks and say something about today.”

Vanessa Friedman, Fashion Editor of the Financial Times and selector of the Dress of the Year 2012, said: “This dress, or rather evolution of the dress, from Raf Simons's first couture show for Christian Dior, represents not just a generational shift in fashion – the moment when a new designer took over at the ultimate French couture house – but also an aesthetic new direction. It signals a move away from the most escapist, extreme garments of the fin de siecle and toward a new 21st century, post-recession balance that blends functionality with fantasy, while at the same time returning to the essential values of the couture: making women's lives easier.”