Lewis Morley. Pat, Germany 1970’s

Dress worn by Molly Roebuck to her daughter Elaine’s Bat Mitzvah in 1957

“Grand Marriage” from the Épée collection by Christian Dior

Autumn/Winter 1956

Royal Ontario Museum (Object number: 2013.68.11)

Curt Gunther - Angela Dorian (Playboy 1967)

Two young women from Chornobyl, 1915

Cuna Women in 1935

taken by photographer Fred McKim

Kodachrome slide of a Florida House, 1961

Evelyn Nesbit

besakih, bali, 1974. photo by walter imber

André Kertész. From "My France"

Custom Dress worn by Elaine Roebuck to her Bat Mitzvah

Christian Dior

Spring 1957

“It all started when I was twelve years old and I wanted a bat mitzvah. My father said absolutely not — girls didn’t have bat mitzvahs in those days,” Roebuck tells me. “My mother rallied for me and finally my father said OK. The next thing I knew, we were on the train to Montreal to look at my dress.”

The dress in question is a silk organdy masterpiece custom designed by Monsieur Christian Dior himself. Dior did not design for children back in ‘57, but he made an exception. “Not just anyone could go in and say ‘whip me up a dress for my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah’ – that wasn’t their business,” says Dr. Alexandra Palmer, the museum’s senior fashion curator. But that’s just what Elaine’s mother, the late Molly Roebuck, did. “She had a motto: If you’re going to do something, you better do it right,” says her daughter. “And in her mind, Dior was just right.” Likely, the exception was made on account of Dior’s relationship with Holt Renfrew, the prestigious high-end retailer with exclusive rights to his collection in Canada back when it launched.

So, with the help of her friend, buyer Betty Macpherson, Roebuck commissioned the dress in Paris. It was to be modest, but fantastical enough for such a special night. After a few months of trading sketches with Dior himself, the muslin models arrived in Montreal, where Dior’s pieces were made-to-measure for the Canadian market. “The dress was dreamlike and it made me think, or maybe even feel, like a princess,” says Roebuck. The end result was a full-skirted silk organdy cocktail dress with daffodil embroidery. As it was a one off, the fabric never appeared in Dior’s collections. “I knew the dress was special, but at the same time, I didn’t think I was different from any of my friends,” she says. (Teen Vogue)

Royal Ontario Museum (Object number: 2013.68.14.1-2)

Sylvia Rivera during the filming of "The Transexual Menace" (1996)

photo by Mariette Pathy Allen [website] [instagram]

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Women in dressing gowns with bonnets

Unbekannter Künstler (Photographer)

Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Playboy Magazine (July 1972)