The shift dress evolved from the sack dress, a dress that was first shown by designers Hubert de Givenchy and Cristobal Balenciaga in the 1957 Paris collections. Although not dissimilar in cut to the famous flapper dresses of the 1920′s Charleston era, it didn’t have the glitz. The sack dress bombed at the show and received a lot of bad press. Many Parisian’s thought the dress was ugly because it had no shape.

However Givenchy was already designing much of  Audrey Hepburn’s wardobe for her movies having met her her during the filming of Sabrina in the 50′s. In 1961 he designed the iconic black dress Audrey wore in ‘Breakfast at Tiffanys’. Givenchy had many famous clients including Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Grace of  Monaco. Both were great fashion icons and fans of the shift dress.

Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's

About this time an American socialite called Lilly Pulitzer was living in Florida, her husband Peter owned citrus groves there. Lilly decided to make juice from the different fruits and sell them to tourists. She set up a fruit stand by the roadside in Palm Beach and the juices were very popular. Lilly asked a dressmaker to make her up some dresses that would help cover the stains from the fruits. The design was simple, a sleeveless dress with two front darts and the length falling just below the knee. They were made using brightly coloured patterned cottons. Her customers loved the dresses as much as the juice and some wanted to buy them, so Lily started selling dresses too. The design became a  ’classic’ shift dress and at the time were affectionately called “Lilly” dresses. When Jacqueline Kennedy, who was an old school friend of Lily’s wore one of the dresses for a feature in Life Magazine it started a fashion trend throughout America.

By now the shift dress had evolved by following the female figure more closely, skimming the body line. Because there wasn’t much emphasis to the waist line they were very comfortable to wear and gave a flattering silhouette. This simple dress was a hit and became popular with women all over the world.

In 1966, Mary Quant queen of the mini skirt took the shift dress and turned it into the mini dress, which was worn 6 or 7 inches above the knee. A young 16 year was hired to model the dress, her name was Twiggy – the rest as they say is history.