## Dress Design Material

Dress Design Material. Mina Loy Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Bienecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

In September of 1941, Loy designed fabric material for dresses that she later mailed in to Vanity Fair (Prescott 78). Loy writes that she wants the dress pattern to be an “all over design of polka dots among which certain dots differing in color or tone from the others form Victory V.” Victory V most likely refers the victory sign popularized by the British “V for Victory” campaign during World War II, but also resembles the logo of Victory V, a then-popular British brand of licorice lozenges. Susan E. Dunn notes that Loy’s “fabric designs incorporated art-nouveau imagery into modernists geometrics,” and also functioned as a site of “escape [from] economic oppression” (447). In addition to designing fabric material, Loy designed clothes for the modern woman, ranging from evening gowns to bathing suits (Dunn 447). Although, as Margaret Konkol notes, “Loy was an inventor by disposition, but also by economic necessity,” most of her dress designs did not earn her a substantial income (296).

Victory V lozenges: A potential inspiration for Loy's 1941 design
Bibliography