$2,500.00 stockings, anyone? (in today’s currency, that would be $41,519.00) This is the story of Hollywood’s go-to-guy for outrageously priced, beautifully tailored silk hosiery. Unbelievable.
Stockings for Movie Stars Read More »
On page one of this three page guide, you will find some essential notes and illustrations from the editors of Vanity Fair regarding the good taste of 1918 (as well as the simply awful).
The Well Dressed Man Confronts Bad Taste (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1918) Read More »
If one judges by appearances, I suppose I am a flapper. I am within the age limit, I wear bobbed hair, the badge of flapperhood. I powder my nose. I wear fringed skirts and bright colored sweaters, and scarves and waists with Peter Pan collars and low-heeled ‘finale hopper’ shoes. I adore to dance… But then there are many degrees of a flapper. There is the semi-flapper, the flapper, the super-flapper. Each of these three main general divisions has its degrees of variation. I might possibly be placed somewhere in the middle of the first class.
‘A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents” (The Outlook, 1922) Read More »
A clever observer of the passing scene typed these words about the social revolution that he had been witnessing for the past six years:
In those dark ages before the war women’s fashions changed from year to year, but generally speaking at the dress-makers word of command…The first short skirt sounded the knell of his dictatorship, and since then womanhood has never looked back…I say again that [today’s fashion] is a phenomenon which the social historian appears to be passing over.
Click here to read about the fashion coup of 1922.
The Revolution in 1920s Fashion (Saturday Review of Literature, 1925) Read More »
When the skirt hems began to rise in the Twenties, it was widely understood that the vision of a woman’s leg was a rare treat for both man and boy; a spectacle that had not been enjoyed since the days of Adam (married men excluded). The flappers certainly knew this, and they generally believed that suffering the dizzying enthusiasm of the male of the species was a small price to pay in order to secure some element of liberty. The flappers liked their hem-lengths just where they were and, thank you very much, they were not about to drop them. Attached are some verses by an anonymous flapper who expressed her reaction regarding all that undeserved male attention her knees were generating.
Ode to Feminine Knees (Flapper Magazine, 1922) Read More »
A former fashion model, Bobbie Woodward, was outraged when she awoke that morning in 1947 to find that the hidden hairy hand that decides which direction the fashion winds will blow had given the nod to some snail-eating Frenchman who stood athwart fashion’s unspoken promise to continue the skirt hem’s march ever-upward. Wasting no time, she quickly marshaled other equally inclined women and formed The Little Below the Knee Clubs, which spread to forty-eight states (as well as Canada) in order to let the fashion establishment know that they would not be forced into wearing this fashion juggernaut known as The New Look.
The attached SEE MAGAZINE article serves as a photo-essay documenting the collective outrage of these women and their doomed crusade against Christian Dior.
One 1947 fashion critic believed that the New Look suffered from a split personality. Click here to read her review.
Jihad Against ‘The New Look’ (See Magazine, 1948) Read More »
In light of the fact that all Army personnel would be issued $300 with their honorable discharge papers, the fashion editor for Esquire Magazine, Henry Jackson, decided to moonlight at Collier’s in order to provide some solid fashion-tips on how best to spend that hard-earned cash.
The Ex-Soldier-Goes Shopping (Collier’s Magazine, 1945) Read More »
Periodically we run across articles on this subject and it makes us sit up and recognize that this must have been a constant fear for numerous women (and fashion journalists) during the Twenties. Each article centers on a widespread belief that the Deep State behind the fashion industry had plans afoot to force women back into long skirts and corsets and that women would not be allowed any say in the matter.
Click here to read a similar article and here to read our other article on the subject.
Turning Back The Fashion Revolution (Literary Digest, 1929) Read More »
The attached article is by an unidentified, pointy-headed male, and regardless of the fact that it was written over 100 years ago, many of his reflections regarding fashion and those who are enslaved by it are still relevant in our own time. It all started for this fellow when he felt the urge to understand why such a broad variety of New York women should take to wearing black for each and every occasion and so he polished-up the ol’ cranium, rolled up his sleeves and began to think hard about the nature of fashion. He concluded that the lot of the female fashion victim
is not the ordinary story of women’s victimization, her subjection in a man-made world. She, after all, accepts of herself this silent decree of fashion and rushes to it. It is woman-made, this particular enslavement
The Black Dress Arrives (The New Republic, 1921) Read More »
