Caught in the Twenties

Cover of Delineator magazine, September 1928. Illustration by Helen Dryden.

Caught isn’t the right word; “enraptured” might be more accurate. I finally have a chance to visit bound volumes from the mid-nineteen twenties and photograph them, and I wish I could post everything I find. By 1928, Delineator magazine is filled with the styles we think of as “the twenties.”

Butterick patterns for January 1928. Delineator, p. 33. Composite from original illustration. I’ll return to these patterns in a later post. Love that coat!

There’s a strong Art Deco influence in the geometry of day dresses, and there’s drama, beading, and a flutter of chiffon in the evening.

A gown from Paquin, February 1928, and a jewel-studded evening gown from Lanvin, March 1928. Delineator magazine.

For a knock-out evening coat by Lanvin, circa 1927, click here.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a sixties’ girl that the proportions of 1928 look “right” to me.  Not that I would ever want to wear a straight-torso-with-hip-belt dress, but the knee-length skirt balances them better than the skirt lengths of 1925 or 1926.

Print fabrics, Butterick patterns; Delineator, August 1928.

With my library time machine, I’m currently “visiting” 1926, 1927 and 1928.  I try to bounce around from decade to decade in this blog, but getting out of the late Twenties is going to be hard.

Joyful geometry: Butterick patterns in Delineator, February 1928. I love the way the angle of the trim on the bodice is echoed by the angle of the pleated skirt panel. Interesting that the button is located at the natural waist….

I’ve already written about the fashion shift of the mid-twenties (click here.) Just to review, fashions for young women (15 to 20) were slightly shorter than those for mature women in 1925 and 1926.

Patterns for adult women, Delineator, December 1925.

Patterns for girls 15 to 20, and small women. Delineator, December 1925.

Left, teens 15 to 20; right, adult women. Composite based on Delineator ilustrations, December 1925.

Because teens and adults were drawn differently, it’s hard to get an exact comparison, but the hems on the adult women seem to be a couple of inches farther below the knee. When I compare the two dresses in the center, the orange one on the right looks dowdy to my modern eyes. All four figures are drawn with impossibly long torsos.

Here are some Butterick fashions from 1926:

Pictured are two little girls, and four girls aged “8 to 15 years.” Their dresses are quite short, but look like young adult fashions of a year later. Delineator, February 1926.

The proportions on these knee length skirts look “right” to me, but they are not dresses for young women; they are for girls under 15. I especially like that plum colored outfit on the far left.

Two adult women flanked by two girls aged 8 to 16 years. Delineator, February 1926.

These are Butterick patterns from 1927:

Women’s fashions with straight silhouettes. Butterick Nos. 1329 and 1317, Delineator, March 1927. I love the use of graded values of the same color, and those repeated geometric, Art Deco jogs on the dress at left — with matching cuffs. Skirts end just below the kneecap.

These couture designs for evening, 1927, use metallic fabrics and beading, and look quintessentially “Twenties.” It would be hard to mistake the dress on the left for any other era.

Left, a salmon pink-and-silver fringed and beaded evening gown by Paquin; right, a straight gold metallic cloth dress with finely pleated ruffles, by Yvonne Carette. Delineator, January 1927, p. 16.

Two evening dresses by Chanel. Left, “deep orange” lace; right, a dress completely covered with black beads. Delineator, January 1927.

Detail of paillette beading on black Chanel dress; Delineator, January 1927.  Apparently the beads change direction, giving a checkerboard effect.

If you love the Twenties, it’s hard not to think, “Now, we’re getting somewhere!”

The Metropolitan Museum has a beaded dress from 1926 attributed to Chanel; click here — and don’t forget to click on “Additional Images” for a a close-up of the beading and spangles.

A few images from 1928:

Two women’s dresses from October 1928. Butterick patterns 2243 and 2267. Note the zigzag formed by the skirt panels at right. It’s hard to see, but the band on the left dress is two colors, or two shades of the same color.

This young lady appeared in an ad for Fleischmann’s yeast, which, she said, restored her health. The fabric of her glittering dress is quite striking:

Fleischmann’s Yeast ad, Delineator, May 1928.

Butterick patterns for misses and women (from teens to bust 44″.) The coat came in sizes 46 and 48, too. Delineator, November 1928. Hems are already on their way down.

For more about 1928 “Hems Going Down,” click here. This cartoon dates from 1929.

 

 

 

 

On Writing Shorter — and About Shorter Styles

Detail of Camel cigarette ad, Delineator, March 1929.

“Writing is easy. Editing is hard.” — witness2fashion

I keep trying to write shorter posts, really, I do, but one thing leads to another. I keep finding old images I want to share. Or I start to write about one thing — e.g., transitional hemlines in the late 192o’s  (“Going Down!”) — and realize that I also have images to share of transitional hemlines in the mid- 1920’s (“Going Up!”)  (Which led me to realize how short — in months, not hem length — the fashion era I think of as “the Twenties” really was!)

When I look at a fashion illustration from 1924 or 1925 , I am tempted to cover the bottom of the dress with my finger just to see what it would look like with a shorter, “real twenties” hem. (I did it in a photo program, instead. See the results farther down.)

Two dresses from 1924. Butterick patterns in Delineator magazine, June 1924 (left) and November 1924, right.

Just over one year later, styles had changed, and not only in length.

Butterick patterns for December, 1926. The dresses that were in style in 1924 look very long compared to these “classic” 1920’s fashions.

Since I’m interested in everyday fashions, I can’t help wondering how women on a limited budget coped with rapid fashion change. Of course, when you only own five or six dresses, they do wear out faster…. But many women trying to stay in style without buying a whole new wardrobe must have resorted to taking up hems and remaking dresses.

The styles of 1924 would need some alteration not to look old-fashioned, especially on young women. Did women shorten dresses  like this?

What if this dress from June, 1924, was shortened like this?

November, 1924 dress, shortened (in my computer) for 1926 or 1927. A clever girl would use the old hem fabric to make a hip-level belt, too.

I’ll be writing (at length — sorry!) about hems going up — and hems going down — in future posts. Notice how convenient it was for me to shorten these dresses where they already had a design line? That’s no coincidence…..

Hems had already started down again before 1929. The real problem that fascinates me is how women coped with dresses getting much longer (not such an easy alteration) just when the stock market crashed and unemployment skyrocketed in 1929-1930.

Nevertheless, this photo of a group of women with President Herbert Hoover in 1931 shows that — at least among middle class women — the new hem length was uniform and widely worn.