London has taken advantage of the Olympic Games to claim in style its status as a Creative Capital, and the fashion industry could not miss this celebration. Under the name ‘Fashion 2012’, the main institutions and companies in the sector have been working hard to program a series of activities during the Olympic summer with fashion as the protagonist. Yet again, the Victoria & Albert Museum is one of the epicenters of this new tribute to British fashion. After undergoing an intense rehabilitation, the galleries dedicated to clothing in the London museum reopen to the public with the exhibition ‘British Glamour Since 1950‘, a spectacular display of the 60 most dazzling party dresses created between the 1950s and today by British dress designers, which can be admired until next January.

Organized on two levels, the exhibition draws mainly on exclusive models created for special occasions such as premieres, private parties, royal events and debutante parties. And it tells the story of elegance in Britain over the past half century. During the 1950s, the post-war period limited gala occasions to the social presentation of upper-class young ladies, the occasion for extravagant and refined country parties. From the 1980s onwards, couture began to influence the aesthetics of the middle classes, and from the 1990s onwards the red carpet emerges as an aspirational mirror for all the middle classes.