Flaunting red-hot Valentino and an appalling understanding of history, Florence Pugh arrived at the London premiere of “Oppenheimer” in quite…inflammatory fashion. Pugh’s gown, selected from Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Fall 2023 collection, was certainly a choice. The backless dress featured a plunging neckline, cutouts, and a poufy skirt with a train — all matched to the bloody hue of the atom bomb that incinerated half a million Japanese civilians.
Pugh even color-coordinated her hair dye with the dress. A photo circulated of the actress posed squatting down with her hand placed cheekily on her chin, the gown balled up like a cloud of flaming fabric. The caption: “She dressed up as the explosion.”
And the explosion was a hit. Harper’s Bazaar raved over the “fiery red ball gown,” while People reported that she “glowed like the light of a fire in a copper-orange dress.” Christian Allaire of Vogue savored what he described without a trace of irony as “burnt orange.” Attempting to pinpoint the Pantone shade, he asks the important questions: “How would you ask for that at the salon? Orange soda? Creamsicle? Pumpkin Spice? Whatever shade it is, it’s entirely delicious.”
What Fashion Can’t Hide
A quick history lesson is in order. Before its afterlife as palette inspo, the A-bomb displaced and laid waste to Native American and Hispanic communities at its testing site in New Mexico, killed untold numbers of Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and condemned generations of their children to radiation-induced cancer. A very pretty history indeed (none of which, incidentally, is given a lick of screentime in “Oppenheimer.”)
Pugh departs from the bombshell hyperfemininity of the atomic pin-ups with her buzzcut and nose ring. But there’s nothing freeing, interesting, or even original about a pretty, wealthy white woman playing dress up with historical trauma. Strip away the heat and flair and sex, and it’s just heartless.
The aestheticization of atomic power is nothing new, and Pugh’s incendiary look can be seen as a modern incarnation of the atomic pageants of the 1950s. Just months after the dropping of Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, red-blooded Americans gloried in the toxic afterglow of American victory by ogling showgirls in mushroom clouds. Life magazine ran a feature on Linda Christians as the “Anatomic Bomb” in September 1945. Candyce King, lauded for “radiating loveliness instead of deadly atomic particles,” was named “Miss Atomic Blast” in 1952. The most iconic atomic pin-up of all, Lee A. Merlin, was the famous “Miss Atomic Bomb” of 1957. Clad in a cotton mushroom cloud, she was captured throwing her arms in the air, red lips open, and eyes closed in rapture.
Americans had it hot for the bomb, and the atomic fixation ran the circuit from Las Vegas showgirls to haute couture in the years of the Cold War. French engineer Louis Réard named his 1946 invention of the modern bikini after a nuclear testing site on the Bikini Atoll, purportedly for its “explosive, dangerous potential.” American couturier Adrian released an “Atomic 50s” collection to celebrate the start of the decade, featuring dresses that emulated the silhouette of the mushroom cloud. Scholar Masako Nakamura writes, “Once it was linked to the sexuality and the bodies of beautiful white women, the atomic bomb and its deadly power were turned into something fascinating, desirable, explosive — and yet something that could be tamed.” The atomic bomb lent a flattering light to the white-hot glow of All-American girls, who stoked the American ego with a sexy atomic optimism in military might. Their dazzling curves, amplified by mushroom clouds, cushioned US anxieties about a nuclear holocaust — seeming to forget that for hundreds of thousands, that day had already come.
By the end of the decade, the atomic spectacle lost its sparkle as the late-day realization of the effects of radiation led to peace protests, and the United States suspended nuclear weapons testing in 1958. Now, 65 years later, the old flame’s alive again. To be sure, Pugh departs from the bombshell hyperfemininity of the atomic pin-ups with her buzzcut and nose ring. But there’s nothing freeing, interesting, or even original about a pretty, wealthy white woman playing dress up with historical trauma. Strip away the heat and flair and sex, and it’s just heartless.
If there’s anything that Pugh and her stylist Rebecca Corbin Murray have achieved, it’s to show fashion at its most vacuous, yet also most revealing. What does it say about our current moment that Miss Atomic Bomb is back? The 1950s were a time of social conformity, reinforcement of gender roles and the nuclear family, consumer culture, and anxieties over communism and domestic subversion. This would unravel into the social ferment of the 1960s with startling parallels to today’s struggles for racial justice and youth activism on hot-button topics from abortion to affirmative action, civil rights to climate change. Yet, the 1960s also saw the retaliatory rise of conservatism, whose devotees in 2023 still yearn to return to an imaginary mid-century of American greatness (read: racism and housewives — or maybe a smoking redhead in an atom bomb).
As fashion returns in cycles, so does history. And those who don’t remember their lessons are doomed to repeat much worse than wardrobe misfires.
