House of Dorat - Parisian Fashion Design Firm - 1920

Blue serge coat dress embroidered in tinsel and wool. Careful execution, conservative lines, combined with daring details, make the products of the house Dorat desirable.

With Her Own Looms and Producing Her Own Models, Dorat Offers Many Charming Numbers for the Winter Season

Favorably known as specialists in knitted goods, the young house of Dorat is rapidly making a name in higher dressmaking fields.

The offerings for the winter season are youthful and becoming. I saw many good tailleurs of velvet, both long and short jackets, with a fancy blouse matching the lining of the coat.

One trim, medium black velvet, worn with a yellow blouse, had buttonholes worked in the same yellow silk. Squirrel and mole make attractive collars and hems, while a beige duvetyn, the coat quite long and straight, drew my attention. It had a big, round mink collar.

Long triangular points of the same fur going up the skirt of the jacket gave it just the necessary flare. A grey and black check, with a short, loose coat, a long, single white revers crossing the front, makes a smart fall walking suit.

I gazed with admiration on a series of princely ermine, mink and broadtail wraps, all the more so as they become scarcer every year!

Next comes an interesting collection of knitted dresses. The downfall of tricolette has been predicted for years, and yet we now realize that one or two of these little dresses are indispensable as “slip-ons" and sport dresses.

Dorat has her own looms and produces her own models, be they silk, wool or a mixture of both. The striped or ribbed dresses are especially pretty. Turquoise striped in white, grey lined in yellow; they are “chemises" and depend on sashes and a woven design for ornament.

Yellow silk jersey, hand painted in blue flowers, is smart, but you are not to imagine that this is plain old tricolette— there are countless fancy stitches; one soft green model is knitted in a check pattern, the detached back and front panels edged in monkey.

A great deal of monkey is used here as collars and fringe; a black velvet slip, slit at the sides over white brocade, is edged with it, the effect very striking.

The most interesting of blue serge dresses is a straight model embroidered from the chest to the hem in fine copper thread tracery. The embroidery is faintly pinched in at the back by two heavy copper tassels at either side.

For the afternoon, beige silk detached loops turned in at the foot over an underskirt of gold lace is very graceful, while among the dinner dresses a pale pink satin with a pointed bodice is charmingly trimmed with three strips of pink ostrich at each side of the skirt.

Pink is the favorite evening color, from flame and geranium to the palest rose chiffon. As a relief from the eternal low backs, I must quote a pink and silver lamé, cut square and low in front, a panel starting from the neck at the back; the turned-in hemline, a decided favorite, narrows the fullness of the skirt, while the loose wide sash provides the long train.

"Dorat" in the Garment Manufacturers’ Index, New York: The Allen-Nugent Co. Publishers, Vol. II, No. 2, September 1920: 31.