
In 1944 Claude Hensinger, an American serviceman, jumped out of his burning aircraft over war-torn Japan, deployed his parachute and eventually found his way to safety. After the war, his fiancée used material from the parachute to make her wedding gown. It may not have been the most luxurious material, but given that it brought her fiancé home alive, it was infinitely more valuable to her than silk or taffeta would have been. The dress is now part of the collection at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.