The fashionable gowns will be one of two extremes: pencil slim or big skirted like a puff ball. Whatever its cut, its color may be anything from soft dove grey to something called satan red. Fabrics are rich and lustrous, particularly the nontarnishable metallic materials. Newest is aluminum, colored gold or silver and woven into lame or onto rayon or even wool in gleaming designs.
By the time these images in American VOGUE hit the streets, the fashion house of Paul Poiret (1879 – 1944) was very much on the decline. Following the close of the First World War the designer was never able to regain his pre-1914 status. With the restlessness of the Twenties came the demand for a new mood in fashion and Coco Channel (1883 – 1971) became the new champion of Paris Fashion. Poiret closed his doors ten years after these photos were printed.
Illustrated with three nifty black and white fashion illustrations, this critic lays it all on the line as to what the most exciting part of ladies fashions will be for the summer of 1934 – there is much talk of the Paris offerings from Marcelle Dormoy, hats by Tappe and smocks by Muriel King. However, no other fashionable bauble attracts her attention more than the concept of the net dress:
The thing that everyone is going for now is net and, when you see that new net dresses, it is pretty hard to understand why this frivolous fabric was forgotten so long. It is being made into dresses and jacket dresses which are called cafe clothes; street-length skirts and crisp, starchy necklines and usually, short sleeves, each with its individual brand of ingenuity.
Click here to read an article about the nature of adultery.
The unknown author of this article believed deeply that the Paris fashions of 1913 were very much in keeping with the grand traditions established and maintained by that city since the eighteenth century. This critic was very impressed with the recent work of Paul Poiret
The old flesh sculptor himself, Donald Loomis, late Physical Director for MGM Studios, let loose with some 1930s tips as to how he was able to make all those movie stars look so utterly fabulous – some are quite useful (some are pathetic).
Symmetry is the objective of Hollywood body sculptors. For bust-reduction, Loomis has a simple formula: Jump up and down with no support. Exercise in which the arms are forced backward and forward horizontally are used to develop the upper chest…
Click here to read an article about the demise of a popular 1940s hairstyle.
These images, as well as the headline, were from a paid avertisement for a fashionable fifth avenue shop that had originally appeared in a chic Conde Nast magazine.
The slobs who run this website are a slovenly lot, so don’t take our word for it – but we believe this hooded turtleneck sweater that showed up on fashion’s catwalks during the fall of 1952 to have been the proverbial bees knees!
Written under the pen name P. Brooke-Haven, this very funny essay was in fact written by Vanity Fair’s drama critic, P.G. Wodehouse, who attempted to understand the criminal nature of artists.
Many and myriad are the scholars who toil over this website daily, but not one of these over-paid and under-worked nerds were able to recall a single instance during the American Civil War in which ladies’ fashions served to benefit any of the combatants – until this article was found.
A VOGUE MAGAZINE article about Washington etiquette can be read here…
Twelvemonth ago, the war had sobered ‘le monde ou l’on s’amuse’ like an icy douche. Europe rang with the clump of tramping feet. Forked lightening seemed to lurk in the sky. In club cars of limited trains and smoke rooms of trans-Atlantic liners heads were put together and the air was as tense as a fiddle string… Fashion tipsters, with long ears and short sight, said that the world would put on black, and style was knocked in the head, and look for the deluge, and so on ‘ad nauseum’.
Twelvemonth ago, the war had sobered ‘le monde ou l’on s’amuse’ like an icy douche. Europe rang with the clump of tramping feet. Forked lightening seemed to lurk in the sky. In club cars of limited trains and smoke rooms of trans-Atlantic liners heads were put together and the air was as tense as a fiddle string… Fashion tipsters, with long ears and short sight, said that the world would put on black, and style was knocked in the head, and look for the deluge, and so on ‘ad nauseum’.
For all too few it is understood that fashion need not end in the wilderness: for it is more than likely that that was where the need for fashion was first recognized and it was there, among the toads and the dung, that the Well-Dressed man first crawled out of the muck and civilization
Yachting is one of the things that begin at the bottom. That is to say, at the shoes. They are the foundation, as it were, for the rest of life on the rolling deep.
Here are some assorted musings concerning the budding cosmetic surgery scene of the early Fifties by the Hollywood movie queen Susan Hayward (1917 – 1975).
At the time this article appeared on the newsstands in 1952, there were probably fewer than 100 plastic surgeons throughout the entire United States and breast augmentation surgery was in its infancy, however advancements were being made daily as a result of the carnage generated by the Second World War. La Hayward was cautiously optimistic regarding the brave, new world of aesthetic surgery:
The wonderful thing about plastic surgery is that it can do almost anything you want it to do… If you have a birthmark on your face or body, a good plastic surgeon can remove it. Even if you have such real disfigurements as a harelip, an expert plastic surgeon can achieve the impossible.
Attached is printable fashion editorial by a lifer in the world of 20th Century American fashion, Marian Corey who stood firm on her belief that the Summer of ’33 would stand out as the first season in which the swankiest threads in fashion’s offering would be linen and cotton rather than silk:
Cotton and linen have gone chic on us. Yes we know that you’ve heard this before. Every year for the last three, stylists have become very sentimental, along about March first, on this subject and each year practically everyone has gone right on wearing silk and more silk, just the same. This time, however, things will be different; this is the summer to believe the stylists.
The article is illustrated by six photographs picturing various assorted well-fed loafers of the Palm Beach set.
This West-coast fashion critic believed that the fashions of Christian Dior stood firmly in opposition to the optimistic, Twentieth Century casual elegance of Claire McCardell (1905 – 1958) and Adrian (1903 – 1959), preferring instead to spin
the feminine figure in the unconventional manner, trying to make her look good where she ain’t. He seeks the ballet dancer illusion – natural, rounded shoulders, too weak to support a struggling world…Her waist is pinched in an exaggerated indentation, the better to emphasize her padded hips…There are butterfly sleeves, box pockets, belled jackets, and barreled skirts, suggesting something like a Gibson girl, or whatever grandmother should have worn.
Click here to read more 1940s articles about Christian Dior and his New Look.
Six fashion illustrations concerning the autumn hats of 1918:
Paris is exceedingly critical in regard to hats even in wartime, and the new ones are most interesting. Black velvet of course is rampant, and Marie Louise especially is using much much black panne velvet…
Heartlessly ripped from the binding of an ancient issue of VANITY FAIR was this page of shoe illustrations in which a smart pair of womens leather boots are the centerpiece, accompanied by Russian dancing shoes, a splendid pair of gold brocade slippers, white buckskin tennis oxfords and a pair of walking boots.
Legendary fashion designer Christian Dior had a good deal of trouble with people who would illegally copy his designs; click here to read about that part of fashion history.
Fashion, like all empires, has it’s slaves. The slaves are treated cruelly but, strangely, they never seem to mind; they do what ever is required of them. Many are the examples of fashion’s tyranny: in the past it has demanded that it’s slaves wear cowboy boots, although none could rope a steer, and it has demanded of it’s slaves that they wear uniforms, although none could fight. In fashion’s name the slaves have removed ribs and teeth, reduced or enlarged body parts, dyed hair cross-dressed and tattooed themselves like jail-birds. The slaves do it all and there seems to be no limit to fashion’s fickle whims that will ever make them say, no.
To illustrate this point, you can read this beautifully illustrated Vogue magazine article from 1919 in which the beast demands perfectly healthy young women to walk with canes.
