Volume 8: Women's wear, wedding gowns and Mainbocher apartment interiors, 1947 - 1948

Volume 8 contains coverage of Mainbocher's Fall/Winter 1947 and Spring/Summer 1948 collections; his designs for elite weddings; and his role in dressing Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, named one of the "Best Dressed Women of 1947." For fall, corsets were back. Mainbocher's collection was esentially a total recall of the past seven years executed in more opulent materials of post-war opportunity. He said the two key "battle-points" of fashion change were skirts and shoulders. For spring, the main idea of his collection was to merge "prettiness and chic." Included in this volume are several press releases from Eleanor Lambert's agency, as well as excerpts from radio programs that either Mainbocher himself appeared on, or his fashions were discussed by the host. The highlight of Volume 8 is a six-page color spread from the March 1948 issue of House and Garden magazine entitled "Self-Portrait in Two Rooms." It is a rare glimpse of the designer's New York City apartment with numerous Kertesz photographs. The single folder has a typed contents page. There are a handful of articles written in French.