Fashion

Campus Fashions for Autumn (The Diamondback, 1949)

Designing women are working toward the return of the chemise dress, the raccoon coat, the slicker rain coat, the ankle bracelet, multiple chains of beads, etc. Anything they have forgotten, your imagination may safely supply.

Important in high fashion this year are the scissors skirt, long and impossibly tight, the winged collar, featuring a neckline that juts off at a terrific angle, the bat collared suit – which looks more like a cartwheel than a costume. One can happily assume that these creations will never take on the campus…. Safer predictions are that the campus co-ed will take to tweed suits, especially those trimmed in velvet…

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The Short Hair of the Late Forties (The Diamondback, 1949)

The shingle cut, the feather trim, the French Scissors cut or the cherub cut – no matter which you choose – a short hairstyle flatters your face…. When the American college girl first began to clip her long tresses, the general reaction was one of general horror. Now that the surprise has worn off, the various advantages of short hair become apparent: trim locks are cool, easy to take care of, smart looking and stylish.

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The Dress-Reform Movement and Male Attire (Literary Digest, 1929)

A few short paragraphs from a late-Twenties issue of Literary Digest recalled the terribly unproductive plans of the short-lived dress-reform movement and the frustrating nature of the human male in most matters sartorial:

The male is a shy creature, and has always been particularly fearful of appearing conspicuous…


Click here to read an editorial about the need for reform in men’s attire.

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The New Glamour of Velvet (Literary Digest, 1936)

A 1930s fashion article which perfectly encapsulated some of the heady excitement that filled the air when a new crush-resistant, non-wrinkling, packable, ultra-fashionable velvet hit the market. The material was immediately swooped-up by the glam squad in far-off Hollywood; RKO chief costume designer Walter Plunkett pontificated:

Velvet is the epitome and symbol of elegance.


Not one to be upstaged, Travis Banton (1894 – 1958) Plunckett’s counterpart at Paramount Studios, chimed in declaring:

The flattery and refinement of velvet is supplied by no other material.

Anticipating the Springtime coronation of Edward VIII, thousands of yards of velvet had been manufactured for the occasion.


Click here to read about the woman who dictated many of the fabric restriction rules on the American home front.

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The House of Lucile (Hearst’s Sunday American, 1917)

Fashion and Hollywood costume designer Howard Greerstyle=border:none
wrote of Lady Duff Gordonstyle=border:none
(born Lucy Sutherland, 1863 – 1935):

…she was the first to introduce the French word chic into the English language, particularly in relation to fashion. She was the first dressmaker to employ mannequin parades (ie. models) in the showing of clothes…She was responsible for many fads and her clothes made many people famous. She was the most expensive dressmaker of her time, and the most aloof.


Lucile was one of the few souls to survive the TITANIC sinking; click here to read her account of that sad night.

•Read about the 1943 crochet revival•

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The Dress Reform Movement (La Nazione, 1919)

In the early parts of the 20th Century serious attention had been paid in some quarters to what was called dress reform. An article from the August 14, 1929 magazine The Nation pointed out that

The Life Extension Institute weighed the street clothing of the women in New York City last June. The clothing of the women…averaged two pounds, ten ounces, while that of the men was was eight pounds, six ounces.


The Italian Futurist Ernesto Thayaht offered his remedy for the fashion maladies of the day with the design of a one piece garment that many Americans chose to see simply as pajamas. Needless to say, it didn’t catch on.


Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.
Click here to read an editorial about the need for reform in men’s attire.
Read about men’s fashions from 1937 and the break-through in color that had been so sorely needed.

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Comprehending the Flapper Revolt (Vanity Fair, 1921)

In the early Twenties there were a good many social changes which men had to struggle to understand; among them was the Modern Woman. The Italian novelist and lexicographer Alfredo Panzini (1863 – 1939) attempted to do just that for the editors of Vanity Fair.

‘Don’t expect us’, she says to you, disconsolate male, ‘don’t expect us to be like the old-fashioned girls who went to church, and did the laundry, and looked up to their husbands as to their God.’

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The Flapper Exageration (The Flapper Magazine, 1922)

The attached column first appeared in Flapper Magazine and begins with three paragraphs outlining the ceaseless march of flappers throughout the centuries (Eve, Cleopatra, Madame Du Barry, etc…) and then dedicates the remaining three paragraphs to the various legal dust-ups flappers were causing throughout the fruited plane:


In Vinland, Kansas, a town of 400 inhabitants, [the rustics are up-in-arms because] Alice Hansen and Maude Buchanan, 16-year-old flappers, and daughters of farmers, are wearing skirts shorter than those that are in vogue among the high school pupils….it is now up to the highbrows of the Supreme Court of Kansas to decide the case and bring a satisfying verdict…All this criticism of flappers is bunk and should be treated lightly.

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