Coat and dress ensemble with matching hat, pink silk gabardine, Christian Dior by Marc Bohan, Look 62 haute couture spring/summer 1966, Silhouette courte et mouvante collection, Paris, France

Given by Jill Ritblat

Jill Ritblat has said this about the pink silk Dior cocktail dress and coat:

"This was one of the most beautiful outfits I've ever seen. I can't remember choosing it. It was Dior S/S 1966. I probably didn't see the show. I got engaged (to Elie Zilkha) in March and married in April. We had 5 weeks between the announcement and the ceremony. Both mothers pressed the button and things went into action. We went round to the various couturiers, so we would have seen it in the Salon in Paris (Av. Montaigne). It would have been on a rail. I remember having no problem in choosing any of the Dior outfits.

At the time, I was 23 and a practicing barrister. I qualified, I went straight to law school, aged 17, and when I finished I was too young to qualify for the bar, so I had some time. I went to work for a friend and worked on the Hackney Carriages Act, which had sections on how long your horses were to work! Then a friend of mine who already worked in law suggested 'Women don't get any work unless they go into crime', so I worked with Robin Simpson, in Victor Durand's chambers. I had been at school with Victor's daughter. Whilst working with Robin, who was very much a character, I got to have several cases on my own, and one judge said to me, 'Miss Slotover, I believe this is your first case. Congratulations!' One day Robin said, 'I am sorry you'll have to move on because the clerks don't want you in chambers; they don't want to invest in a woman because you'll just get married and leave.' I was 22 at the time.

So, I went to New York to take an art course, and was pursued there by Elie, my future husband. Our mothers thought "We're not going to let this one get away!" so, as soon as I returned from New York, I was swept up into arrangements and planning for the wedding. I stepped off the plane into the perfect storm. There they were, managing this engagement...

The clothes were my mother's image of how her daughter should be married. If it had been up to me I'd probably have worn a mini dress and gone to a registry office, so Dior was a bit of a dream. I wasn't expecting to have anything so wonderful. At Dior, they were all very pleased to dress me. I weighed less than 8 stone, so they were all thrilled to bits to have this very young client. However it wasn't really my taste at that time. The other bride of the season was from the Greek shipping crowd, and was only 14 or 15. Her dress was nothing like mine, which was the model dress off the catwalk. The wedding dress was so pretty and dreamy, so young and modern, and I also thought this pink outfit was very modern.

So, we had the wedding, then the reception at Claridges, where we were going to spend the night. I went upstairs to change into my so-called 'going-away' - this pink ensemble - and came down the lift wearing it and everyone broke out into applause when I emerged! We got into a car, drove round the block, and returned - there was a ball that evening, which I wouldn't go to because my mother had said "Who wants to see the bride at the ball?" We instead dined in our room, and the next day, we did go away properly, to St. Tropez. I wore a pale blue skinny rib jumper which could have been Kenzo or Sonia Rykiel, a polo neck and a mini skirt, and a blue wool reefer coat from Fenwicks with brass buttons. My shoes were red and blue, and came from a really famous designer, possibly from New York. They had bright blue snakeskin toe caps.

I did actually wear the pink Dior outfit quite a bit. I wore it for weddings and dinners, and loved it. One time, I accidentally left the hat in its little hatbox on the floor of the airport in Zurich when flying to my in-laws in Paris, and Dior made me a replacement hat overnight. However, I reported the loss to the airport and got the hat back - so the V&A have the original!

Sally Brampton wrote about the pink dress and coat that they had echoes of sweetness and good behaviour. This was actually a great example of vision with hindsight, as for the time it was quite extraordinary in its new chic, its quality, the luxury of the material and workmanship along with its youthfulness, the perfection of its design, its proportions. It was also quite daring in that it was not an evening dress where you might expect to show bare arms and bosom, but a cocktail dress which, I think, were not normally so bare - bare arms, bare back...."

(Added by Daniel Milford-Cottam, 21/07/2017)

Marc Bohan was the House of Dior’s longest-serving creative director. He worked at several Parisian couture houses including Piguet, Molyneux and Patou before joining Dior in 1958. His initial role was to design the London collections. In 1961, he showed his first collection as Christian Dior's creative director in Paris, receiving jubilant reviews from the fashion press. Bohan continued as creative director, steering the house through the cultural shifts of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, until departing in 1989.

This coat, dress and hat ensemble was ordered by Jil Ritblat for her 'going away' outfit.

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