Why is the “Bar Jacket” still a trend?

Created in 1947 by Christian Dior, the Bar Jacket takes its name from the bar at the Plaza Hotel in Paris, where the women of the Café Society of the time wore the “new” suits with flared skirts and jackets fitted at the hips, designed by the French stylist and presented during the post-war period in his first Haute Couture collection. In contemporary fashion, the Bar Jacket, seventy-seven years after its runway debut, remains a relevant piece, whose hourglass silhouette has inspired and continues to influence the style choices of fashion system designers. The ligne a Corolle of the pleated skirt and the eight-shaped jacket created by Dior became symbols of blossoming after years when the haute couture houses of Paris were forced to close due to the Nazi occupation and the poverty caused by the world conflict. This new architecture designed for the female body restored to women a sensual and harmonious silhouette that opposed the austere wardrobe created by Coco Chanel in the 1920s, characterized by dark colors and a comfortable, functional line, free from the corsets of the Belle Époque. Despite the feminist movements of the time detesting this silhouette, considering it a cage of patriarchy that prevented women from moving and working, the Bar Jacket nonetheless achieved great success. The hourglass jacket is still a star on red carpets and runways today.

The most recent manifestation of the return of the eight-shaped jacket occurred at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where Taylor Russell wore an archive Dior suit designed by John Galliano from the Misia Diva SS95 collection on the red carpet. The suit, embodying the Office Siren style, featured padded shoulders, a pencil skirt below the knee, and a jacket with a very narrow waist, resembling a corset. The collection in question was inspired by Belle Époque clothing and specifically the style of Misia Sert, a friend of Picasso and muse of Renoir. Galliano had created a version in 1994 for Madonna’s Take a Bow video, but with short sleeves. This piece is, among other things, very similar to an outfit that Dior himself designed in 1950 as a stage look for Marlene Dietrich in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright. The French singer-songwriter Yseult also wore a faithful reproduction of the New Look (a term coined in 1947 by Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow) on the Cannes red carpet for the premiere of Megalopolis. In an article in W Magazine, Matthew Velasco wrote that the young French artist loves to make statements on red carpets: wearing the historic duochrome suit, until then always seen on slender silhouettes, means challenging the social hierarchy of bodies and allowing non-conforming physiques to be represented.

But the Bar Jacket has also been worn by Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, and Deva Cassel at the second edition of the Vogue World event, which took place last June in Paris, at Place Vendôme. In retracing the history of French fashion, during the event, the models paraded like young equestrians wearing Bar jackets that, starting in the 1950s, became part of the equestrian attire of women in French high society. Others, like Rihanna, chose to modify Dior's historic New Look to make it more contemporary: for the latest Haute Couture show of the maison, the singer wore a black suit that reinterpreted the classic Bar Jacket's shape, crafted in a fabric similar to that of waterproof puffer jackets instead of silk, and even the typical raffia hat was replaced with a baseball cap, as a sign of modernity. A more structured, buttonless version of Rihanna’s suit was recently worn by Rosalia for Dior's SS25 collection. In this regard, Maria Grazia Chiuri, inspired by the mythical figure of the Amazon, presented the hourglass jacket in a short-sleeved version with a belt tied at the waist similar to a kuro obi (black belt) used in karate, almost as if it were the sports uniform of an archer.

The hourglass silhouette of the Bar Jacket has inspired both fashion golden oldies and designers of the new generation in recent collections presented in Milan and Paris. Jean Paul Gaultier, for example, created pinstripe suits with sinuous shapes in the early ‘90s. In the Blond Ambition World Tour, Madonna wore one of these suits with the addition of two cuts at the neckline to showcase the cone bra. More recently, in the Spring Couture 2024 collection by the French maison under designer Simone Rochas, we find models of Bar Jackets in a coquette style with wide hips, raised embroidery, and bows. Similarly, Dolce & Gabbana, referencing Gaultier's creations for Madonna and also the costumes they designed for Ciccone during the Girlie Show Tour (1993), proposed for SS25 fitted double-breasted satin jackets with the incorporated cone bra paired with garters and lace lingerie. Azzedine Alaïa and Thierry Mugler, great lovers of corsetry, also utilized the hourglass jacket in their creations. The Tunisian designer in SS92 created jackets with sinuous lines and heart-shaped necklines framed by white lace, which were first worn by actress Winona Ryder and more recently by Alexa Demie, giving them a gothic allure. Mugler, fascinated by the eroticism of corsets and burlesque costumes, created jackets with wasp waists worn with miniskirts and garters in his spectacle shows (Spring Couture 1997), which we see in famous shots by Helmut Newton in the early '90s and in the recent collections under the creative direction of Casey Cadwallader, particularly in SS25, where the designer created hourglass jackets inspired by some images showing cross-sections of flowers, almost as if to highlight the “anatomical” complexity of the corollas in the construction of the garment.

Simone Bellotti, the creative director of Bally in the SS25, has also reinterpreted the silhouette by creating shaping blazers and coats entirely in leather, inspired by the shape of cowbells. We can observe contemporary variants of the Hourglass Jacket in the “Wow” SS25 collection by Bottega Veneta, where Matthieu Blazy has designed hourglass jackets: some in country checks, others with the shape of a rabbit instead of the classic collar. In SS25, Séan McGirr, the new creative director of Alexander McQueen, has reintroduced jackets with this type of fit, which has always been a hallmark of the brand, paired with shirts featuring “creepy” Dracula collars. Demna Gvasalia from Balenciaga has also accentuated the sinuosity of the silhouette to the extreme by creating his Hourglass jacket, which in the latest SS25 collection he transformed into a long and somber evening dress. Another version appeared in the FW24 of The Attico, with very oversized shoulders paired with cargo pants or worn as an evening gown. This silhouette has caught the attention of designers like Thom Browne, who included it in his collections (Couture Fall 2024), as well as Yohji Yamamoto, who proposed a deconstructed variant in FW24 with fabric scraps on the shoulders, almost creating an incomplete effect on the garment, and Nicolas Ghesquière from Louis Vuitton, who designed hourglass jackets paired with wide-brimmed hats for Resort 2025. This shape has also fascinated Oliver Rousteing, the designer of Balmain, who proposed double-breasted blazers with pointed shoulders in SS25.

Dolce&Gabbana FW24

Thom Browne Fall 2024 Couture

Jil Sander FW24

Yohji Yamamoto FW24

Versace SS24

The Attico FW24

Louis Vuitton Resort 2025

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood SS24

Balenciaga Resort 2024

Bottega Veneta FW24

Alexander McQueen Resort 2025

Also at Dior, after the founder's death in 1957, the new creative directors, from Yves Saint Laurent to Maria Grazia Chiuri, preserved the stylistic legacy of the Bar Jacket by reintroducing it in their collections and adding a personal touch. Marc Bohan, for example, who led the maison from 1960 to 1989, understood the stylistic value of the Bar Jacket so well that he proposed it as a wedding dress in the 1987 Couture collection. The Bar Jacket will meet the baroque and romantic taste of Gianfranco Ferrè, the theatrical and transgressive maximalism of John Galliano, and the minimalism of Raf Simons. Last February, the emblematic jacket of French fashion returned to the big screen, depicted in the series The New Look, produced by Todd A. Kessler, which retraces the genesis of the suit, the career of Christian Dior, the dramas and rivalries with Coco Chanel, Pierre Balmain, and Cristóbal Balenciaga, who were also protagonists of the transformation that fashion was experiencing at the end of World War II. The Bar Jacket has been a symbol of a reborn society, has traversed the course of time, and, more than other garments, possesses the transformative ability to imagine, shape, and sculpt the body, reproducing a silhouette that adapts to different physiques and that, although nostalgic and in some ways traditional, still fascinates.

The current creative director of Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri, has successfully modernized the Bar Jacket by redesigning its rigid construction, using softer fabrics for the internal padding, turning it into a comfortable and functional piece of everyday wardrobe. As a testament to the importance that the designer has given and continues to give to this historic piece, Chiuri created a documentary The Greek Bar Jacket in 2022, available on the brand's YouTube channel, with which she wanted to tell the origins and the construction process of the jacket in the workshop of the Greek tailor and embroiderer Aristeidis Tzonevrakis.