Summary

Green silk slip dress designed and made in Melbourne by Jenny Bannister in 2000.

It was custom made for and worn by British model Naomi Campbell on the runway at the 2000 L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival.

An article from 'The Age' newspaper, dated Monday 7 Feb 2000, p.5, features a photo of Naomi in the dress.

It forms part of the Jenny Bannister archives which document her fashion design education and vocational life from the late 1960s until 2009.

Physical Description

Layered, bias cut, green silk evening slip dress. Sleeveless. Fastens at back with long green silk covered rope ties. Flared/fishtail skirt with scalloped, rolled hem and long slit at proper right to reveal the leg and layers of fabric beneath. The dress is constructed from four layers of fabric. The outermost layer, extending from the underbust, is a pale blue silk chiffon. A deeper aqua green chiffon layer is beneath that, and the base layer is a golden-green silk, lined with synthetic fabric in the same colour (acetate, viscose or polyester?).

Significance

The Jenny Bannister archive is of national significance, and is arguably the most important fashion design, manufacture and retailing archive still in existence. It documents the career of one of Australia's most significant designers and business women, who kept a thriving company going for almost 40 years, long after her contemporaries had retired or gone bankrupt.

No other collection documents this significant period in Australian fashion and clothing manufacturing so completely and succinctly; from the rise of an independent fashion industry in the 1960s and 70s, complimented by a strong local manufacturing sector, to the moving offshore of most of the manufacture as costs rosed to the eventual bankruptcy and closure of many local labels due to an increased overseas retail presence and rise of online consumerism.

Its importance was recognised by the National Library of Australia, who collected the bulk of her business and manufacture archival material, including 100 of patterns. It was only the second such collection to enter the institution, after that of prominent Sydney designer Linda Jackson.

She was the master of creativity and diversity, able to capture numerous markets, producing the most outlandish and artistic garments as well as highly commercial clothing. as renowned fashion historian and academic Professor Robyn Healy wrote 'Art Clothes, body sculpture, craft, theatrical costume, party clothes or serious fashion - Jenny Bannister's work transcends categorization. Like a New Age traveller, she explores the extraordinary, the primitive and the futuristic, to create garments for for kings, the Mardi Gras of the hip crowd'.

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