Saturday, 2 November 2013

Designer Spotlight: Lilli Diamond

Most Mid-C vintage gals will have owned, coveted or discussed at length a piece by the fabulous designer Lilli Diamond.

Lilli started her label in 1951 in Los Angeles, California. Her designing career actually carried on well into the 1970s, but for the purposes of pretty pictures, I'll be concentrating on the 1950s and 1960s.

An early label - note the additional 'Original' up top. This was dropped in the 60s.

Lilli experimented with a range of different fabrics and embellishments, including feathers, diamanté and sequins.

Available from WEAR IT AGAIN SAM on Etsy

Miss Diamond's pieces in the 50s and 60s were superbly structured, lending themsves perfectly to the hourglass figure. 


She created some wonderful jacket and dress sets.



A particularly coveted material Lilli liked to use was lurex. I like to describe it as Chromspun (i.e silver metallic thread woven through crepe type material, usually black, rarer and more desirable in different colours).

 Available from DEADLY VINTAGE

You'll often find LD dresses with unusual neck and hem lines, I'm a big fan of the mermaid!



You can always count on Lilli for your LBD!

Both available from WEAR IT AGAIN SAM on Etsy

Feathers! Just for the hell of it!

 
Lilli embraced and enhanced womanly curves.

This lilac sparkly creation is one of my personal faves, I've also seen it in black!

A later label.

Lilli Diamond is going up in price, you can expect to see a 50s bombshell dress retail for anything from £150-300 depending on the outrageousness of the design and type of fabric used.

Renowned seller John Day has a huge collection of Lilli Diamond. Follow him on Twitter (@busterflipineck) and contact him for your LD needs!

I'm hoping to catch him for an interview next week, and he can tell us about some of the amazing Lilli pieces he's had come through his hands.

No comments:

Post a Comment