Fringe can be glamorous or merely common, but when well used in fashion it can be truly sublime. There is nothing like it for catching the eye while the fringe swings in rhythm with the wearer. Adrian was a big fan of fringe, as well as of the flaps and straps he added to his designs to show movement. The beautiful gown above was designed by Adrian and worn by Loretta Young in Midnight Mary in 1933. The gown is silk satin, with all the fringe at the back, set off by a silver clip. While fringe is ideal for showing movement, it also perfectly contours a beautiful figure. And its peek-a-boo qualities have made it popular for wearing it with little else on show-girl costumes or other sexy outfits. The richness of the Adrian gown above is emphasized by the long fringe dragging on the floor. This photo also serves as the front cover of my book, Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label.
Travis Banton was another master of glamorous design, and in the use of fringe. Here his gown of white silk jersey is worn by Claudette Colbert as part of her personal wardrobe. It is similar to one of his designs she wore in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), where the fringe was in teal green. The gown above has a dozen rows of silk fringe, and in this case, a diamond clip is worn at the front of the gown.
Ginger Rogers wears a sexy fringed outfit and mini-skirt (before they were known as such) in the "Let Yourself Go" number in the film Follow the Fleet in 1936. Bernard Newman designed Ginger's wardrobe for this film and several others for her films with Fred Astaire. Fringed skirts were made for dancing, and had been popular flapper dresses in the 1920s for dancing the Charleston.
Adrian designed this fringed dress for one of the stars in Our Modern Maidens, released in 1929. Both the short flapper skirts and uneven hemlines would soon be out of style. The production cycle of filmmaking caught many movies between fashion styles in 1929. One result was the concerted effort for designing a more timeless, classical Hollywood style.
Fringe was even used on bathing suits, as seductively shown here by Betty Grable in 1941. The idea, like Betty, had legs. A line of fringed Gottex bathing suits was shown in 2003.
Paris Hilton wears one of the best fringed gowns seen in the last few years, here at the opening of the documentary Paris, not France in 2009. The scalloped treatment in the gown is very complimentary to the use of the fringe in this beautiful Roberto Cavalli gown.
This is a design devised by Adrian for a costume for the masquerade ball sequence in the 1930 film Madame Satan. The inspiration is Spanish, where fringed shawls remained popular long after they had lost favor elsewhere in Europe. The bold patterns on the fabric and the fringe stayed on Adrian's mind for years until he revived the look for his custom label in 1949.
Fringe had been in use for as long as wool had been woven, and in fact fringe was formed from the ends of the warp beyond the woven fabric. Its decorative appeal was natural and could be used in many contexts in both folk costume and high fashion.
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Fringe looked natural on the buckskin and leather jackets of western mountain men and cowboys, inspired by both native American Indian dress and the Mexican and Californio vaqueros. The look for men was revived with the Hippie movement, and from there was worn by rock stars like Roger Daltrey and Bono. The look had never lost popularity in Country-Western circles, and even Elvis had his own fringed outfit to perform in.
The term fringe is also used to mean outside of the mainstream, as in "fringe theater." It shares some of the same qualities in fashion. And of course fringe has also been used for pillow cases and sofa trimmings. There is an art to using fringe well in fashion. Some dresses look like tinselled Christmas trees, and some like they were caught in a shredder.
But if you want your gown or dress to swing, let it be On the Fringe.
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