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 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.
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.
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…
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.
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!
Scorned for too long by churchmen as an ambulatory example of folly, the flapper at length finds herself defended by the Church. She is not, in this new view, the brainless, overdressed Jezebel that she has been pictured to be. ‘She is a symbol of the times. As she sweeps down the street, she is like nothing so much as a fine, young spirited puppy-dog, eager for the fray’.
Unlike some members of clergy, the wise sages of Hollywood were clearly numbered among those who held favorable views about flappers, but they didn’t always produce films that were sympathetic to their causes; for example, the editors of Flapper magazine hated this movie.
This funny announcement from the yellowing pages of FLAPPER MAGAZINE made it clear to one and all that all flappers were eligible to enter their Flapper Beauty Contest:
You don’t have to be beautiful to be a flapper, and if you’re not a flapper you wouldn’t be considered beautiful. So there!
(But we’re sure it helped)
A single page history essay concerning the most popular hairstyle of the 1920s.
In the attached column, a high-spirited editorial writer hails the Flapper Revolution and singles out Paris fashion designer Paul Poiret (1879 – 1944) for being so out of step with the women of his day for continuing to design long dresses:
When flappers rise en masse and say that they can see no reason for giving up a style that means comfort, freedom and health, then indeed, out of this welter of strikes, injunctions and warfare may be seen a glimmer of hope for mankind.
M. Poiret, designer of Paris, has seen fit to take up the cudgels on behalf of the long skirt, and therefore he cannot object if the shafts of ridicule are hurled at him in return…
The following is an excerpt from the review of the New York production of the 1921 play, A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton 1888 – 1965). With much enthusiasm, the reviewer wrote:
We know of no better expression of the creed of the new generation than that which Clemence Dane has drawn up….
What followed was a very short soliloquy which beautifully summed up not only the philosophy of the modern woman, but the philosophy of much the Twentieth Century.
Will Paris succeed in imposing long skirts on the flappers of America?
Not if most of them have their way! When Paris started the short skirt fad and America eagerly aped it, the dressmakers figured that it would probably run its course and then die a sudden death. But no! For American flappers may be fickle but they know a good thing when they see it. And they intend to hang on to it.
Click here to read about another icon of the Twenties: Rudolph Valentino.
A Victorian father embraced the spirit of the Flapper rebellion, welcomed it into his house and testified that it made his daughters better and their family bonds stronger.
When Christian Dior died quite suddenly in 1957, the eggheads of the fashion world got their knickers in a twist as they wondered who would serve as the creative force for the great fashion house that he had established just ten years earlier; all eyes turned to his very young assistant, a 21 year old man named Yves Saint Laurent (1936 – 2008).
Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.
Last week, two of the nation’s leading manufacturers of synthetic textiles were taking important steps to woo the feminine heart from silk to synthetic hosiery. The E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Company announced that it had laid plans for construction of a new $7,000,000 plant near Seaford, Delaware, for manufacture of a new synthetic yarn called ‘Nylon,’ which, used in hosiery, was expected to compete successfully with all types of silk stockings.
Here is a seventeen word offering of English to French fashion terms for those wishing to improve their early Twentieth Century Paris shopping abilities; accompanied by a terribly charming illustration.
Since The New Look sought to overhaul the fashion silhouette of the female form it was quickly understood that women would need different foundation garments to complete this look. Fashion’s cry has always been: When nature doth deny, let art supply – and the rocket scientists of the ladies underwear subculture did just that. The attached photo-essay from See Magazine shows three pictures of the new under-lovelies.
Click here to learn about the lingerie and pajamas that had to be hand-crafted on the W.W. II American home front…
The attached men’s fashion article concerns the a brief autumn visit to the country; recalled by an anonymous fashion scribe whose charming prose allowed us to envision a leisured life in the late Gilded Age.
