Le Canned Dress
Irwin Silver put a dress in a can, gave it a frenchified name, and then sold these for $25 a pop. This was back in 1966, and it was a marketing gimmick about as cynical as you might guess. Silver was cashing in on the mid-1960s fad for anything canned, and he figured that if people were stupid enough to buy canned air (i.e. an empty can), perhaps they'd also buy a canned dress. Apparently he sold around 100,000 of them.
More info from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Dec 14, 1966:
More info from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Dec 14, 1966:
Everything's packaged in cans these days, even candles and air. But the newest tinned item to roll into stores is "Le Canned Dress," the bright idea of sportswear manufacturer Irwin Silver.
"I was being driven crazy by cans," he says. "Every time I turned around, I seemed to bump into a can. First I saw canned candles, then someone gave me a tin of canned air. I began to wonder why dresses couldn't be put up the same way."...
The fashions produced by Silver's company, Wippette, each weigh 4½ ounces, come packed in gay one-pound cans and are tagged with silver labels designed to look like the top of a can."
"I was being driven crazy by cans," he says. "Every time I turned around, I seemed to bump into a can. First I saw canned candles, then someone gave me a tin of canned air. I began to wonder why dresses couldn't be put up the same way."...
The fashions produced by Silver's company, Wippette, each weigh 4½ ounces, come packed in gay one-pound cans and are tagged with silver labels designed to look like the top of a can."
Image source: Cabinet magazine
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Nov 26, 1966
Comments
Women were so happy when they bought these, they danced. That's where the can-can came from.
Posted by Virtual on 03/28/17 at 10:21 AM
This was only a couple of years after Warhol made the Campbell's soup can fashionable, so it's not surprising. And a few years later they started selling panty hose in plastic eggs... so why not dresses in paint cans?
Posted by Brian on 03/28/17 at 03:47 PM
I'm starting to think Jughead was a closet stoner with a bad case of the munchies. clearly, he was a fan of burger king, and neglected to remove the birthday crown after a particularly visceral munch session...
Posted by Roswell Kid on 03/30/17 at 12:29 AM
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Category: Fashion | 1960s