Andy Warhol (after)
The Souper Dress, 1965
Screenprint in colors on a cotton paper A-line dress
(labeled 'The Souper Dress' at the neck). 36 ½ x 21 ½ in (93 x 54.6 cm). From the original edition of unknown size, vertical and horizontal folds (as issued).

This iconic Pop Art paper dress, inspired by Warhol’s classic Campbell Soup design, is an excellent example of the intersection between art, fashion and commerce which occurred in the 1960s. The dress was issued by Campbell Soup in 1966-7 for the price of two soup can labels and $1. An example of the Souper Dress is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

As art historian Marco Livingstone has stressed, Pop Art was never a circumscribed movement with membership and manifestos. Rather, it was a sensibility emergent in the 1950s and rampant in the 1960s. Andy Warhol (who began his career as a fashion illustrator) had been painting Campbell's soup cans since 1962. Such advertising icons, along with cartoons and billboards, yielded a synthesis of word and image, of art and the everyday. Fashion quickly embraced the spirit of Pop, playing an important role in its dissemination. The paper dresses of 1966 - 67 were throwaways, open to advertising and the commercial.