New York

A 1934 evening gown by Augustabernard. The Museum at FIT

'A woman can be overdressed," said Coco Chanel, "never over-elegant." To be overdressed in the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression, was to be tone deaf and unfeeling. To be elegant was an expression of esprit de corps. People were hungry, almost everyone was thin, and the lean '30s slouch adopted by women who would be fashionable—hips and shoulders hugged forward—could be read as a shrug at fate, a sinuous posture of defiance. "There may be trouble ahead," goes a song written by Irving Berlin for the 1936 movie "Follow the Fleet," "But while there's moonlight and music, / And love and romance, / Let's face the music and dance." These lyrics are on the wall at the entrance to the Fashion Institute of Technology's new exhibition, "Elegance in an Age of Crisis: Fashions of the 1930s." They capture the tone of a decade that began like Berlin's song, darkly, in a minor key.

Outside the doorway to the exhibition, however, one is ebulliently greeted by the shoes of the man who first sang that song, then danced to it: Fred Astaire. There are eight pairs in all—soft shoes, dress shoes and taps—but symbolic is a pair of brown-and-white wingtips, so lighthearted they could take flight. Hollywood itself took flight during the '30s, leavening the Depression with escapist fantasies in which stars were exquisitely attired. Astaire—whom the show's curators, Patricia Mears and G. Bruce Boyer, call "the sartorial icon of 'The New Man,' a look that idealized a trim figure, athleticism and casual grace"—may be the most hypnotically elegant man in modern history, every move articulated without a catch of self-consciousness or a hitch of his clothes. This feeling of release, the sensation of classical ease beneath dress of flow and give, is built into the fashions of the '30s.

The show's curators state that this is "the first exhibition to simultaneously present women's high fashion and bespoke menswear, and to do so from an international perspective." Evoking the spartan luxe of a couturier's salon, the walls of FIT's large downstairs space are hung from ceiling to floor with white sheers in fluted folds. Scale is further accentuated by paired columns of illuminated white mesh, a reference to the columns in the Grand Salon on the oceangoing S.S. Normandie. The world was sailing into uncertainty, no doubt about it, and a return to the ideals of classicism coupled with a renewed stress on hand craftsmanship was spurring innovation in all the arts. For fashion this meant a more daring play of cut and line, and a decrease in laid-on decoration. Add in the far-reaching influence of Hollywood movies and the stylistic shift took on a distinctly international flavor.

Elegance in an Age Of Crisis: Fashions of the 1930s

The Museum at FIT

Through April 19

The show's attention to menswear and the changes wrought by bespoke tailors in England and Italy—names like Frederick Scholte, Gennaro Rubinacci, Vincenzo Attolini—is fascinating. Here was the beginning of the modern suit and sports jacket, evolved by Scholte out of the heroic greatcoats he saw on Britain's Royal Horse Guards. The recalibration of proportions was surprisingly complex, each adjustment rebalanced by another, and all aimed at bringing freedom of movement—plus dash—to the wearer. The new jacket had a broader shoulder, higher armhole, and a full sleeve; the waist was nipped in and lifted an inch; there was more material in the chest, for drape, and less at the hips, to sharpen the V. Robust yet refined, this silhouette was popularized by the Prince of Wales, one of whose jackets is on display, and by stars like Clark Gable, Cary Grant and Astaire, all of whom had their favorite Savile Row tailors.

As for the women's clothes in the show, they too embody modernism. "The garment most closely associated with the 1930s," we read, "is the bias-cut, classically-inspired, 'Grecian' gown." Fabric cut on the bias—caressing of every curve but also clingy—does not welcome underpinnings, least of all a corset (and in a corset you can't slouch!). These designs went unbuttressed and shiveringly unlined, which allowed for the inventive manipulation of chiffon, rayon, satin, lamé and jersey into nonchalant twists, Delphic pleats, and painstakingly delicate yet graphic pin tucks. Yes, Paul Poiret's tubular shapes of the early 1900s, the bare chemise dress of the '20s, and the expensive "poverty" of Chanel's stripped-down knits were big steps forward. But the beauty of the garments here—most of them products of the Paris couture—is that they have nothing to prove beyond their beauty.

Or perhaps there was something to prove. Augustabernard, Louiseboulanger, Valentina, Claire McCardell, Alix (later known as Madame Grès) and, master of them all, Madeleine Vionnet. It was women, these women, all represented here, who brought the era's fashion to a pitch of neoclassical perfection. They did not want to gird or reshape the female form, but to drape it comfortably, reveal it artfully. That the dresses they produced are geometric wonders of timeless fluidity (study Augustabernard's spiral gown of ivory tulle—the pattern for it defies imagining) makes them more beautiful still.

The exhibition includes work by couturiers Jean Patou and Charles James, and it's a thrill to see pieces by Adrian, the design genius of MGM, especially the goddess gown he made for Katharine Hepburn's haughty heroine in "The Philadelphia Story"—white rayon with a Greek key appliqué of gold. The gem of the show comes from Lucien Lelong, his hip-length evening cape of 1934. A crepuscular shade of violet that might be called Surrealist Blue, it's made from slivers of cellophane that cascade like monkey fur. Delightfully resourceful, impossibly chic, it glitters like moonlight on water, reflecting a lost world of ocean liners and supper clubs, banks closed and fortunes lost, and stoicism expressed with a slouch.

Ms. Jacobs writes about fashion for the Journal.