1946-1950

The end of the War brought a great desire for a return to normalcy as women returned home from war jobs to a more conventional domestic life. Meanwhile, in an effort to revive the French couture industry following the liberation of Paris, Christian Dior introduced the New Look, a more feminine silhouette that hearkened back to the narrow waists and longer full skirts of the early Victorian era, another period when domestic and maternal values were extolled. The traditionalist forms of New Look fashion were in contrast with the new American school of abstraction, though some textile design and modernist architecture and interiors were more congruent with new developments in the Fine Arts.