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Guarded with the same ferocity as "plans for a fifteen-hundred-mile ballistic missile," the design called for white, poured like a healthy slug of milk into an "elegant, feminine, ladylike" silhouette. Thirty-five tailors, like Cinderella's woodland creatures, spent six frenzied weeks stitching together the 125-year-old Brussels lace. The finished confection-American-designed, American-assembled, American-worn-was supposed to advertise that the wearer hailed from "a country with dress designers of great distinction, equal to any in the world." And immediately after it was worn, the piece was sent to roost its downy, white-lace feathers in the rafters of a museum, where it would drape for eternity.
That may sound like Michelle Obama's top-secret inauguration gown, and her ethereal white Jason Wu dress was indeed installed at the Smithsonian last month. But those making the feverish descriptions aren't bloggers-they're 1950s fashion columnists, describing Grace Kelly's big, fat, chic wedding frock. Like Obama's off-the-shoulder ensemble, Kelly's royal bridal gown was a sartorial divider page: the end of a blushing political preamble, the beginning of world-stage wifehood. It was also...