Patterns

Dear Couture Pattern Museum Community,

I wanted to share an amazing story about Grace Kelly and a dress made from a McCall’s sewing pattern! (Here she is on the cover of McCall's pattern book in 1955).

In 1955, Grace Kelly was invited to the Cannes Film Festival for her role in “The Country Girl,” for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. During her stay in Cannes, Olivia de Havilland and her husband, the editor of “Paris Match," proposed a photoshoot with Prince Rainier III of Monaco.

On the day of the photoshoot, a power outage at her hotel in Cannes led to a fashion emergency. Grace couldn’t iron her clothes, except, there was one dress from her suitcase that remained uncreased that was still presentable - a floral silk taffeta dress made from a McCall’s home sewing pattern, McCall's #3100.

This is the dress she chose to wear for the unexpected, historic meeting with Prince Rainier!

This wasn’t just any dress. Fashion Editor Cynthia Cabot described it as, “the most publicized dress of the season, accessible to every woman.” It was a symbol of simplicity and elegance.

At the palace, Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier, and what was planned as a brief photoshoot, turned into the beginning of their love story, leading to their wedding a year later in 1956.

Grace Kelly’s choice of wearing the McCall’s dress made from a sewing pattern for this special moment in her life is an example of the intersection of high fashion and accessible home sewing patterns. It shows how patterns and dresses, even those made from a simple, non-branded sewing pattern, were an influential and significant part of the American story.

Let me know what you think about this amazing story of a McCall’s pattern and this fairy-tale romance.