1920S SOCIALITE FULL
1920S SOCIALITE FREE

Many women cut their hair into a bob, a popular hairstyle that emerged early in the decade. The sporting look also helped facilitate a mode for suntanned skin. Through exercise, diet, and various shaping undergarments, women attempted to achieve this look.

1920S SOCIALITE FREE

The simple lines and androgynous shapes of fashion looked best on bodies free from curves. Brooke wrote, “Sports clothes have been developed to such an extent that they may go to lunch at the fashionable restaurants as a matter of fact they are often worn until the hour of cocktail” (Brooke 276).įashion in the 1920s was all about the whole look and there were trends in how the body itself was fashioned. So popular were elements of these sports clothes that in a 1928 issue of The Tatler, M.E. Shrimpton writes, “By the late 1920s, following her lead and embracing wider fashion trends, sleeveless, knee-length shift-like tennis dresses were fashionable” (59). Indeed, one of the most popular fashion stars of the early twenties was tennis star Suzanne Lenglen whose short sleeved, pleated tennis dress and bandeau were created for her by Patou (Pel 14).

Tennis was the most popular sport for women and thus the most popular inspiration for fashion. Patou’s yellow skirt and sweater set show how much tennis clothes influenced design (Fig. The popularity of sports clothes in the 1920s is often attributed, like many of the most popular styles of the twenties, to Coco Chanel, but designers such as Jane Regny and Jean Patou also contributed to the sportswear trend. Sportswear had long been an acceptable form of casual wear for men, but in the 1920s, it also became acceptable for women. 6).Īnother trend for women that enjoyed massive popularity in the twenties was that of sportswear worn as daywear. Lanvin’s dresses were starkly different from the shapeless silhouettes of the flapper, though some interpreted this style with her own feminine twist (Fig. They were feminine and romantic, like the pastel dress designed by Lanvin in 1922, accessorized with a straw hat itself removed from the brimless cloche hats that were popular during the twenties (Fig.

1920S SOCIALITE FULL

Instead, these dresses had long, full skirts, sometimes even with panniers, like this black and silver “Robe de Style” dress shown here (Fig.

In fact, a style popularized by Jeanne Lanvin could not be further from this “androgynous” look. Though this was one of the more popular styles, it was by no means the only. While simplicity in construction was key to both daywear and eveningwear, the latter benefited from ornate decoration: beadwork, sequins, and embroidery all helped create the glamorous nighttime looks of the decade, like this yellow evening dress made of silk and rhinestones (Fig. Both waistlines and hemlines followed similar, though inverse, projections throughout the decade, as waistlines dropped until 1923 before beginning to rise again in 1928 while hemlines rose until 1926, when they started to fall again (Pel 51).Įvening dresses sometimes still nearly reached the ground, though many of the popular styles followed the hemline trends of daywear, as demonstrated in the difference between a 1924 evening dress (Fig. 1) and was a prominent designer during the period. Coco Chanel helped popularize this style (Fig. Also known as the flapper, the look typified 1920s dress with a dropped waist and creeping hemlines that could be created in economical fabrics. This simplicity created the popular tubular “ la garçonne” look that dominated much of the decade. “The development of a more convenient, modern female wardrobe was a major trend of the 1920s and was achieved through the progressive simplification of dress as the decade advanced – a rejection of formality and multiple layers, in favour of comfort and a lighter, more natural effect.” (13-14) Dress historian Jayne Shrimpton writes in Fashion in the 1920s: Essential to these new styles was a simplicity that had not previously been seen in women’s fashion. The conflict, which ended just over a year before the new decade began, had a fundamental and irreversible effect on society, culture, and fashion. At the dawn of the 1920s, the world was still reeling from the First World War.

1920s socialite