Kitty Foyle (dress)

A Kitty Foyle is a dress style of the 1940s, characterized by a dark fabric and contrasting light collar and cuffs, typically of navy blue and white.

[4] As a modest and practical style that was easily copied at home, or could even be used to update an old shirtwaist dress to a new fashion by applying a new collar, it became popular during the wartime austerity period.

The designer Jill Richards, herself a Hollywood actress of around the same era, favoured it in her collections of the 1970s, attracting a clientele of names such as Nancy Reagan.

It takes the usual Gothic Lolita themes of modesty, tradition and monochrome colours of a dark base with a light contrast, but applies them to a later period with simpler lines, rather than the more usual antebellum fussy bows and flounces.

This style is typified by characters such as Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl and Wednesday Addams.