Fashion – Page 8 – Old Magazine Articles

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.

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

Fashion and Hollywood costume designer Howard Greer
wrote of Lady Duff Gordon
(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•

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.

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.’

Colorful Menswear
(Literary Digest, 1937)

This 1937 fashion report let it be known that men’s fashions were getting more colorful; items that we associate with the Fifties such as plaid cummerbunds made their appearance first in 1937. The first clothing item to cross the color line was, in all probability, the Hawaiian shirt – which came into vogue some five years earlier.

Click here to read a related article from 1919.

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.

The Winter Look for Flappers
(NY Times, 1922)

Stockings Scare Dogs

-so ran the sub head-line for this news article from the early Twenties which attempted to explain to one and all what the new look for the winter of 1921 – 1922 was all about.

The Case Against Flappers
(Literary Digest, 1922)

A collection of low opinions concerning the Flapper and her confederates, gathered from numerous clerical magazines throughout the fruited plane:

There is a great deal of frank talk among them that in many cases smacks of boldness. One hears it said that the girls are actually tempting the boys more than the boys do the girls, by their dress and conversation…

Flappers Were Nothing New
(NY Times, 1922)

Since the preceding article was jam-packed with intolerant remarks from the lip-service corner of the Holier-Than-Thou clerical crowd, it seemed only fitting that we post this article which dwelt upon the far more accepting and just a wee-bit more Christian feelings of yet another clergyman who tended to think that the flappers were not really as queer as everyone liked to think they were.

Painting faces is no new thing except on occasion. Belles and famous beauties of the past painted for State occasions. But then it was not good form to wear paint in daylight. Now it is, apparently. That many young women now carry this to extreme is not unusual…

Click here to read an article about the demise of a popular 1940s hairstyle.

N.Y. Court Ruled That Women Can Smoke in Public
(Hearst’s Sunday American, 1917)

A brief notice from 1917 reported on the arrest of three women for smoking in the Times Square subway station in New York City.

When the socially astute, forward-thinking judge recognized that no real crime had been committed they were released, but in the high fashion world feminine tobacco abuse, these women are often said to be the Rosa Parks of nicotine:

Mary Driscoll, Edna Stanley and Elsie Peterson

let their names live ever more!