Western Patio Dresses
1940s & 1950s Western Patio Dress History
The patio dress is one of those garments that is almost impossible to mistake for anything else. an enormous skirt, often arranged in gathered tiers, bright colour and rows of decorative trim.
Today we generally call it a patio dress, but anyone researching original garments and advertisements from the 1940s and 1950s will quickly encounter another name. At the time, the clothing was widely marketed as the “squaw dress.”
That historical name is now considered inappropriate, but it forms an important part of the garment's history. Anthropologists Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones have undertaken particularly detailed research into both the clothing and the terminology surrounding it, and much of the history that follows is based on their work.
A Southwestern Fashion Rather Than One Single Invention
1954 Simplicity 4916
There doesn't appear to be one person we can point to as the inventor of the patio dress. Its beginnings are much more interesting than that.
Research by anthropologists Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones traces the style to a mixture of clothing traditions found across the American Southwest. Their research discusses influences from Navajo, Western Apache, Tohono O'odham and Mexican clothing, all of which contributed in different ways to the fashion that eventually became known as the patio dress.
Even the skirts weren't all the same. Some were fairly straight or only lightly gathered, others had the distinctive pleated “broomstick” look, while others used enormous gathered tiers to create the wonderfully full skirts we so strongly associate with patio dresses today.
So rather than being one traditional garment that was simply copied and turned into a fashion, the patio dress is better understood as a style that evolved from several influences. Designers and dressmakers adapted those ideas and gradually developed the colourful Southwestern fashion that became enormously popular during the 1940s and 1950s.
Arizona & New Mexico to Mainstream Fashion
1954 Advance 6761
The patio dress has its roots in the American Southwest, particularly Arizona and New Mexico, but it didn't stay a regional fashion for very long.
During the post war years, the colourful Southwestern look was becoming increasingly fashionable. Tucson in particular developed a thriving clothing industry, with local dressmakers and businesses producing their own interpretations of the style.
Historical research by Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones documents how important this industry became to Arizona after the Second World War. Their work shows that what we now recognise as the patio dress was being made and sold by numerous businesses rather than by one single designer.
By the 1950s, the look had travelled well beyond Arizona and New Mexico. It appeared in shops and sewing patterns across the United States, allowing women thousands of kilometres from the Southwest to buy or make their own version.
Commercial sewing patterns also helped spread the look. Patterns such as Advance 6761 from 1954, shown here, allowed home dressmakers to recreate versions of the fashionable Southwestern silhouette for themselves.
Cele Peterson & the Early Tucson Dresses
C. Penney's 1957 Newspaper advertisement
Cele Peterson was one of the early names associated with the development of the patio dress in Tucson, but even Peterson herself didn't claim to have invented the style.
Research by Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones found that Peterson had been selling broomstick and three-tiered skirts well before the patio dress reached the height of its popularity. After the Second World War, she began developing complete outfits that drew upon the Southwestern clothing she was seeing around her.
One particularly early example documented by Parezo and Jones survives in the Arizona Historical Society collection. Made in Peterson's Tucson shop around 1947, it consists of a separate blouse and skirt another reminder that what we now call a patio “dress” was very often a two-piece outfit.
Peterson's versions could also be quite restrained compared with the heavily decorated patio dresses that followed in the 1950s. One documented example was made in crisp white cotton with a three-tiered, accordion-pleated skirt falling to around calf length.
As the style became increasingly mass produced, Peterson moved away from it. Other Tucson makers would take the idea much further, and one woman in particular became an important part of the next chapter: Dolores Gonzales.
Dolores Gonzales & the Classic 1950s Look
1950 McCalls 8873
If Cele Peterson represents part of the patio dress's early Tucson story, Dolores Barcelo Gonzales represents the point where the style really began to take on the extravagant 1950s appearance we recognise today.
According to research by Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones, Dolores and her brother Richard Barcelo took over their sister's Tucson dress shop after the Second World War and began experimenting with the broomstick skirt. Dolores developed the idea further, creating heavily trimmed, tiered skirts that became one of the defining features of the 1950s patio dress.
Her business grew well beyond a small local dress shop. The Dolores Shop received orders from around the world, while her designs were sold through outlets in major American cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis and New York. In 1956, her success even earned her the wonderful nickname “The Dior of the Desert.”
What I find particularly interesting is the amount of work that went into these garments. By the mid-1950s, the Dolores Shop employed around thirty workers producing dresses in Tucson. Gonzales designed and cut the garments and supervised their manufacture, using materials that included locally grown Pima cotton as well as imported velveteen and decorative trims.
Her dresses weren't inexpensive mass-market clothing either. Parezo and Jones found that major department-store buyers came directly to the Dolores Shop, where dresses could sell for between $100 and $300 in the 1950s. That gives some idea of how highly these elaborate garments were valued at the time.
The Influence of Dior's New Look
1950 McCalls 8873
something else was happening in fashion at almost exactly the same time.
In 1947, Christian Dior introduced what became known as the New Look a tiny waist teamed with a wonderfully full skirt. After the fabric restrictions of the war years, fashion was becoming extravagant again.
The timing was perfect for the patio dress. Its fitted waist and huge skirt suddenly sat beautifully alongside the fashionable silhouette of the late 1940s and 1950s.
Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones also make this connection in their research, noting the similarities between the rise of the New Look and the grwing popularity of Southwestern patio dresses.
Of course, Dior didn't invent the patio dress and the two styles have very different origins. But women were falling in love with full skirts again, and the patio dress certainly had plenty of those!
As a dressmaker, that's one of the things I love most about these dresses. There is a LOT of fabric in that skirt. The fullness gives them their wonderful movement and once you start adding metres and metres of trim, you begin to appreciate just how much work went into them.
From Patio Dresses to Square Dancing
1955 Butterick 7212
As the patio dress became popular across America, it found a natural home on the dance floor.
Square dancing was enjoying a huge revival during the 1940s and 1950s, and those wonderfully full skirts were perfect for it. Worn over layers of crinolines, they flared dramatically as the wearer danced and turned.
Research by Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones shows that the patio dress style eventually helped shape what became the familiar women's square dance outfit a full tiered or broomstick skirt teamed with a coordinating blouse.
Cele Peterson later recalled that square dancing was when these dresses really came into their own. By then, a style that had begun as Southwestern regional fashion had found an entirely new life.
This connection became so strong that today it's quite easy to look at an old patio dress and assume it was originally a square dance dress. In reality, the story of the patio dress began much earlier.
When the Fashion Began to Fade
By the late 1950s, fashion was changing again. The huge skirts and tiny waists that had dominated much of the decade were beginning to give way to new silhouettes.
Research by Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones shows that production of patio dresses in Tucson and Phoenix began to decline around 1957. By 1960, the style had largely disappeared from mainstream national fashion.
But the patio dress didn't really disappear.
It continued to be worn for square dancing and rodeos, and later versions reappeared as Western wear, Fiesta wear and what became known as the Santa Fe style.
Today the originals have become collectible pieces of Western fashion history and their wonderful full skirts, decorative trims and unmistakable silhouette continue to inspire vintage Western clothing.
1950s Simplicity 3978
What Makes a Patio Dress a Patio Dress?
1950s McCalls 9925
Although patio dresses varied considerably, there are certain features that make the style instantly recognisable.
The most obvious is the skirt. Some were lightly gathered, others were finely pleated in the “broomstick” style, while perhaps the most recognisable version used several increasingly full gathered tiers.
Decoration was just as important as the shape. Rickrack, braid, ribbon, ruffles, appliqué and other trims were often repeated around the skirt tiers and echoed on the blouse or bodice. As the fashion developed, these rows of trim became one of its most distinctive features.
Despite being called a dress, many originals were actually two-piece outfits, with a separate blouse tucked into a matching skirt. Sleeves and necklines varied considerably, which is one reason surviving patio dresses and vintage patterns can look surprisingly different from one another.
There was no single fabric that defined the style either. What really gave the patio dress its identity was the combination of fullness, tiers, decorative trim and a strong Southwestern influence.
The Fabrics and Trims
1950s Advbce 9397
One of the things that makes original patio dresses so interesting is the sheer variety of fabrics and trims used to make them.
Cotton and printed cottons certainly appeared, but there was never one particular fabric that defined a patio dress. As the fashion developed, makers experimented with different fabrics, colours and finishes to give their dresses their own distinctive look.
The decoration, however, became increasingly important. Research by Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones shows that as the style became more established, ribbon, rickrack, ruffles and sequins were commonly used, with the individual skirt tiers often decorated.
This is where patio dresses could really become spectacular. Metres of trim might travel around an already enormous gathered skirt, sometimes with the same decoration repeated on the blouse or bodice.
For a dressmaker, that's one of the things that makes these garments so fascinating what looks like simple decoration can represent an extraordinary amount of sewing.
My Modern Interpretation of the Patio Dress
When I make a patio dress today, I'm not trying to create an exact historical reproduction. What I love is the unmistakable look of the original garments — the fitted bodices, full skirts, rows of trim and, of course, all that wonderful fringe.
I interpret those elements in my own way, using modern, easy-care fabrics rather than trying to replicate the exact textiles that would have been used in the 1940s and 1950s.
The construction is where my real interest lies. Creating those full skirts means working with an enormous amount of fabric, gathering long lengths into tiers and then applying metres of trim or fringe. They're certainly not quick garments to make, but that's part of what I enjoy about them.
My dresses are therefore best described as vintage-inspired rather than historically accurate reproductions. They take their visual inspiration from the wonderful Western patio dresses of the 1940s and 1950s, while being made to wear and enjoy today.
Why I Still Love Making Them
After all these years of dressmaking, it's the construction of a garment that still interests me most, and patio dresses certainly give me plenty of that.
There's something very satisfying about watching a huge length of fabric gradually become a beautifully gathered skirt. Add metres of fringe, braid or rickrack and suddenly the whole dress comes to life.
I don't consider myself a fashion designer. These wonderful styles existed long before I began making them. What I love is taking inspiration from those original garments and using the dressmaking skills I've developed over the years to create my own versions.
Perhaps that's why the patio dress has remained one of my favourites. It's colourful, wonderfully over the top and impossible to ignore.
More than seventy years after these dresses first became fashionable, they still turn heads .
Sources & Acknowledgements
I have always been fascinated by the history of the patio dress, and in researching this article I discovered the extensive work of anthropologists Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones. Their research has been invaluable in helping me understand the origins of these garments, the people who made them and how the style developed through the 1940s and 1950s.
I would like to acknowledge their research, along with the historical collections and archives that have helped preserve the story of this wonderful style of dress.
Nancy J. Parezo and Angelina R. Jones
What’s in a Name? The 1940s–1950s “Squaw Dress”
American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3, Summer 2009, pp. 373–404.
This study examines the terminology, multicultural Southwestern origins and development of the garment from a regional style in the late 1940s into a national fashion during the 1950s.
Angelina R. Jones and Nancy J. Parezo
Tucson’s Squaw Dress Industry
The Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 51, No. 4, Winter 2010, pp. 299–320. Published by the Arizona Historical Society.
This research documents Tucson's post war dress industry and the designers and businesses involved in developing and popularising the style.
Arizona Historical Society
The Society's museum and archival collections preserve garments, fashion archives and other historical material relating to Arizona's clothing history, including material associated with Cele Peterson.