Men, Women and Clothes - Formal Clothes

1950s fashion history series. Doris Langley Moore explores how outfits for formal events are planned to call attention to our joy, grief or glory. She also looks at how ceremonial robes are merely once-fashionable formal attire that has become 'petrified' and how this is particularly true in Britain, where we like to maintain the distinctions that reveal one's place in society.