How 1920 Changed Women's Fashion Dramatically

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

Studying fashion in 1919-1920 for my novella, Resurrection of Hope, was difficult because fashion changed so much in the couple of years leading up to the roaring twenties. Only ten years earlier, women had to contend with bustles and corsets. Hobble skirts were gathered close around the ankles made walking difficult. By the 1915, shirts became full and were just above the ankles. The bustles and corsets that had cursed women for decades were being thrown out. In 1918, straight line dresses were becoming popular, and skirts were actually a few inches above the ankle. The flapper style we know from the roaring 20s was starting to make its appearance.

In 1918, the flapper era started showing up in the cities first. Most women were conservative and wore their skirts a few inches below their knees which was scandalous five years earlier. By 1922, skirts were worn to the knee even in rural areas. The shift or chemise dress with the lowered waistline became popular in 1916 and continued throughout the 1920s. Tailored suits became popular among working women. Most dresses were sleeveless, and women wore sweaters over them on cold days. Jewelry to accessorize the new look became important, and women wore long beaded and pearl necklaces looped around the neck and large bracelets. In the winter, women finished the look with long fur coats.

During World War I, many women had to work outside the home. They started to wear bobbed hair styles because they were easier to take care of. By 1920, the style took off and most women bobbed their hair even in more rural areas and conservative areas of the country. Cloche hats that fit tight around the face were becoming popular and went with the new short hair styles.

In the Victorian era, make-up was considered vulgar, but that changed in the early 1900s. By 1900, women started wearing powder to achieve a pale look. Once that became acceptable, women started wearing makeup to look younger without looking like they were actually wearing makeup. Max Factor opened in 1909 with its first makeup counter and supplied makeup to silent

movie actresses. In 1917, Theda Bara started a trend by wearing heavy eye makeup in the movie Cleopatra. Women in the city started wearing make-up to look like the actresses on the silent movie screen. It was a few more years before the average farmwife would be seen in public wearing makeup.

The biggest change was ladies’ undergarments. Although the corsets didn’t disappear completely, one piece camisoles and slips became the desired undergarments. Because of shorter hemlines, silk hosiery was invented in 1920. It became the fashion for years after that. Bras didn’t come out until 1922, so most women either wore modified corsets or only wore camisoles. Never again would the restrictive clothing of the 1800s limit women.

Tamera Lynn Kraft has always loved adventures and writes Christian historical fiction set in America because there are so many adventures in American history. She has received 2^nd place in the NOCW contest, 3^rd place TARA writer’s contest, and is a finalist in the Frasier Writing Contest.

Her novellas Resurrection of Hope and A Christmas Promise are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

MOVIE STARS OF THE 1920S

ANNE GREENE here.

Films blossomed in the 1920s. By the mid-20s, movies were big business. Throughout most of the decade, silent films were predominant.

The top box-office stars in the 1920s included Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson, Tom Mix, Norma Talmadge, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Colleen Moore, Norma Shearer, John Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Lon Chaney, Sr., and Clara Bow.

Mary Pickford developed into one of the biggest silent movie stars of the era. America flocked to the movies. Mary had been a child star and worked as a bit actress in 1909, yet only ten years later became one of the most influential figures in Hollywood. In 1916, she was the first star to become a millionaire.

Mary married another great star, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Their wedding in late March, 1920 proved highly controversial since both of them divorced so they could marry each other. He presented her with a wedding gift, Pickfair, a twenty-two room mansion in Beverly Hills, setting the trend for stars’ lavish homes in the suburbs of W. Hollywood. Mary Pickford bobbed her long curly hair, one of moviedom's first fashion trends, in 1928. Pickford's Coquette (1929), her first all-talking film, won her an Academy Award, but she retired prematurely four years later.

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. became an American legend starring in a series of swashbuckler and adventure/fantasy films, starting with The Mark of Zorro (1920), soon followed with his adventure Robin Hood (1922). and Arabian nights tale, The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Fairbanks' The Black Pirate (1926) with early two-color Technicolor and the superstar's most famous stunt of riding down a ship's sail on the point of a knife added to his legend. Fairbanks scored again with The Iron Mask (1929). The only film that co-featured both stars was a talkie version of The Taming of the Shrew (1929). Other 1920s Box-Office Stars:

Haunting and divine, Greta Garbo's first American film was The Torrent (1926), followed by The Temptress (1926). Her first major starring vehicle was with John Gilbert in Flesh and the Devil (1926). MGM renamed Broadway actress Lucille Le Sueur and christened her Joan Crawford in 1925. And Louise Brooks made her debut film in mid-decade with Street of Forgotten Men (1925).

Clara Bow, a red-haired, lower-class Brooklyn girl won stardom after a major publicity campaign. In The Plastic Age (1925), she played a flirtatious flapper. Bow’s stardom grew after Dancing Mothers (1926) and again after her smash hit Mantrap (1926). Campaigns promoted her with It (1927). She became known as The It Girl in the high-living age of flappers. Bow starred in the epic WWI film Wings (1927), and became the highest paid movie star at $35,000/week. But by 1933, Bow retired due to the revelation of a heavy working-class Brooklyn accent in the talkies, and a burgeoning weight problem.

Janet Gaynor received the first Best Actress Academy Award for her work in Seventh Heaven (1927). Janet also won an Academy Award for her exquisite acting in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), considered the finest silent film ever made by a Hollywood studio.

Lon Chaney, Sr., the man of a thousand faces, starred in the The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), and in The Phantom of the Opera (1925) his signature role. The unveiling of the phantom's face, when Christine rips off his mask - was and still is a startling sequence.

Even the earliest films were organized into genres like swashbucklers, historical extravaganzas, melodramas, and even biblical epics. There were westerns like The Covered Wagon (1923)), horror films, gangster/crime films, war films, the first feature documentary, Nanook of the North (1922)), romances, mysteries, and comedies from the silent comic masters Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

America loved her movies from the 1920s until now.

ANNE GREENE delights in writing about wounded heroes and gutsy heroines. Her second novel, a Scottish historical, Masquerade Marriage, won three prestigious book awards. The sequel Marriage By Arrangement released November, 2013.  A Texas Christmas Mystery also won awards. Anne’s highest hope is that her stories transport the reader to awesome new worlds and touch hearts to seek a deeper spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus. Anne makes her home in McKinney, Texas. She loves to talk with her readers. Buy Anne’s books at http://www.Amazon.com. Talk with Anne on twitter at @TheAnneGreene. View Anne’s books, travel pictures and art work at http://www.AnneGreeneAuthor.com.

Learn more about Anne as well as get tips on writing award-winning books at http://www.anneswritingupdates.blogspot.com. Join her followers for a chance to win one of Anne's books. 

 

Read Anne's latest Scottish historical novel, MARRIAGE BY ARRANGEMENT. You can buy her book at any on-line bookstore. Or go to http://www.pelicanbookgroups.com.

 

 

 

 

 

FLAPPERS IN THE JAZZ AGE, THE ROARING 20s.

Anne Greene here.  

The flapper became the symbol of young women who championed new ideas about womanhood. Women no longer submitted to strict Victorian morality. Instead, they changed the social status of women by transforming the concept of the ideal woman.

 

In previous decades, the Gibson Girl, with her long luxurious hair, her hourglass figure, and elegant tailored gowns, had been the model of femininity. She was corseted, educated and accomplished, and her first priorities were finding a husband and starting a family. The Gibson Girl used flirtation and femininity to achieve her ends.

 

Flappers rebelled against this model of womanhood.

 

 

Flappers cut off the long hair their mothers had prized, favoring the short bob. They rejected the waist-constricting corset, and the hourglass figure it created. Their loose-fitting dresses, with drop waists and knee-length skirts, created a more boyish silhouette, which some women enhanced by binding their breasts. Flappers wore makeup, which had previously been associated only with prostitution. Make-up's new popularity also changed the way it was used; instead of attempting to imitate nature, flappers used cosmetics to create small bow mouths and pale skin. This was a stark contrast to the rosy look their mothers had prized. However, young women in the 1920s wanted not only to look different from their mothers, they wanted to act differently too.

Flappers rejected traditional rules of propriety in favor of a more modern, fast-paced lifestyle. They were frank and socially liberated, some acting in ways that shocked their elders. Young women engaged in activities previously limited to men, such as smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol – even though Prohibition made drinking illegal. They listened to jazz music and danced new, energetic dances, like the Charleston and the Black Bottom, despite objections that these dances were wild and obscene. They loved automobiles finding their speed and risk a perfect fit, and insisted on driving.

 

Young women in the 1920s distinguished themselves from their Victorian counterparts in their attitudes about sex. Flappers followed Freud and believed that both women and men had sexual desires that were natural, not shameful. Older generations found this interest in sex immodest, but flappers saw it as an expression of women's right to a full life. They criticized Victorian ideas about gender roles, seeing them as impediments to women gaining social equality with men.

 

Flapper culture instigated some baby steps towards a more liberal society, but many of the attempts to make changes in acceptable behavior and gender roles failed. Most young women who cut their hair and dressed like flappers did not go to the extremes of flapper behavior. This made flapper culture more acceptable to the population, but watered down its message of social change.

 

Flappers wanted more equality with men in the business world as well as the social world. Women had just won the right to vote and wanted the right to work in the non-traditional women’s jobs like teaching and shop work.

 

I’m writing a book set in the 1920s about one such flapper. The working title is CUPID GOES BARNSTORMING. Gloria is an orphan trying to make a living. Here's a picture of my heroine.

 

If you had been living in the 1920s would you have remained at home like the Gibson Girl or would you have wanted wider spaces? Leave a comment for a chance to win my new book just released, MARRIAGE BY ARRANGEMENT.

ANNE GREENE delights in writing about wounded heroes and gutsy heroines. Her second novel, a Scottish historical, Masquerade Marriage, won the New England Reader Choice award, the Laurel Wreath Award, and the Heart of Excellence Award. The sequel Marriage By Arrangement released November, 2013.  A Texas Christmas Mystery also won awards. She makes her home in McKinney, Texas. Tim LaHaye led her to the Lord when she was twenty-one and Chuck Swindoll is her Pastor. View Anne’s travel pictures and art work at http://www.AnneGreeneAuthor.com. Anne’s highest hope is that her stories transport the reader to an awesome new world and touch hearts to seek a deeper spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus. Buy Anne’s books at http://www.PelicanBookGroup.com. Or at http://www.Amazon.com. Visit http://www.anneswritingupdates.blogspot.com for great information on writing an award-winning novel. Talk with Anne on twitter at @TheAnneGreene. Visit Anne’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/AnneWGreeneAuthor.