S21 1920s Art Deco Fashion.mp4

Summary

Dive into the vibrant world of 1920s fashion with Julie Levitt Learson from Fairfield University. In this enlightening lecture, Julie explores the transformative era of the 1920s, a time marked by significant societal shifts post-World War I. The women's fashion scene is highlighted by the evolution from heavy corsetry to the liberating styles of flapper dresses and sleek evening wear. Meanwhile, men's fashion maintains its structured elegance with a nod to freer, sporty styles. The talk also delves into the iconic hairstyles, makeup trends, and cultural influences that defined the decade's aesthetic.

Highlights

• Julie Learson provides an insightful overview of 1920s fashion, capturing the era's transformative spirit 🕰️.
• The 1920s saw women abandoning corsets for bras, marking a significant shift in women's fashion 💃.
• Flapper dresses and the little black dress became iconic symbols of the 20s' fashion liberation 🌟.
• Men's fashion blended formal suits with casual, sporty elements, reflecting a changing world 🧥.
• The era's makeup trends emphasized dramatic eyes and lips, with a nod to Hollywood glamour 🎬.

Key Takeaways

• The 1920s marked a fashion revolution with women embracing freedom from corsetry, opting for bras and flapper dresses instead 🎉.
• Iconic styles like the little black dress and bobbed hairstyles became synonymous with the era's chic fashion 👗.
• Men's fashion combined traditional elegance with casual, sporty flair, reflecting a broader societal shift 🚹.
• Makeup became boldly dramatic, highlighting features with heavy eye makeup and the vamp look 💄.
• Cultural trends and societal changes post-WWI heavily influenced fashion and aesthetics during the decade 🌍.

Overview

Julie Levitt Learson takes us on a captivating journey through the fashion landscape of the 1920s. As the world recovered from World War I, the decade saw radical shifts in style, particularly for women. Gone were the restrictive corsets, replaced by bras and breezy flapper dresses, symbolizing newfound freedom and rebellion against previous norms.

Fashion wasn't just about clothing; it encapsulated the changing moral and social fabric of the times. The introduction of the little black dress and popularity of the bobbed hairstyle highlighted this shift towards simplicity and modernity. Moreover, men's fashion, though maintaining its structured elegance, began to relax, incorporating more casual, sporty styles that signaled a broader societal transition.

Makeup and hairstyles of the 1920s further reflected the daring spirit of the era. Smoky eyes, bold lips, and the vamp look became popular, influenced by the rise of Hollywood films. Meanwhile, hairstyles like bobs and earphone faux bobs became trendy, showing how fashion mimicked cultural movements and technological advancements.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction Julie Levitt Learson introduces herself for a Fairfield University honors course entitled 'What We Leave Behind: History of Fashion Architecture and Decor.' The lecture focuses on fashion from the 1920s, providing a broad overview without delving too deeply, as several students are already working on projects related to this era. The introduction sets the stage for a more detailed exploration of trends, styles, and historical contexts that influenced 1920s fashion.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Historical Context and Societal Changes The year 1920 marks a period where the world is still healing from the devastation of World War One. Europe is especially affected, facing both economic and political turmoil as numerous 19th-century governments have disintegrated. Meanwhile, the United States is experiencing a phase of significant economic prosperity, though this period is marked by disparity. Farmers and people of color suffer from disenfranchisement and systemic injustices like Jim Crow laws, despite the booming business landscape benefiting many other Americans.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Women's Fashion: Early 1920s In the early 1920s, women's fashion underwent a revolution, reflecting the broader political, economic, social, and moral changes of the time. This period marked significant shifts, such as the strengthening of labor unions and women gaining the right to vote in the UK and the US following World War One. The chapter explores how these revolutionary changes in society were mirrored in the fashion trends of women's wear in the 1920s.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Day Dresses and High Fashion The chapter focuses on the misconceptions surrounding women's fashion from the 1920s, particularly the flapper style, which has been popularized and somewhat distorted by movies from the 1970s and 2010s. The fascination with this era, epitomized by the 'Great Gatsby' and the flapper image, often simplifies the diverse aesthetics that were actually present at the time.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Evolution in Evening Wear This chapter discusses the evolution of women's foundation garments, highlighting the transition from corsets, which have been sliding down the torso for several decades, to bras, often referred to as bando tops. The fashion sensibilities have transformed dramatically from the 1910s and 19-teens to the present day.
• 07:00 - 10:00: The Flapper and Cocktail Dresses The chapter discusses fashion trends during the flapper era, focusing on the strapless designs and the combinations of camisoles and tap pants, often referred to as step-ins. These garments were crafted from lightweight and delicate fabrics like silk and cotton, although silk was preferred if one could afford it. The style emphasized less volume and tailoring, offering a more relaxed and whispery aesthetic compared to previous heavy and structured undergarments.
• 10:00 - 15:00: Transition Towards Late 1920s Styles The chapter discusses the shift in women's fashion towards the late 1920s. It highlights how clothing started to cover more of the body, using new materials like rubber and elastic. The use of bras and girdles was prominent, compressing and flattening the bosom and tummy respectively, with garters aiding in holding up stockings. This era marked a notable change in the fashionable forms for women.
• 15:00 - 22:00: Outerwear: Coats and Footwear This chapter discusses fashion trends in outerwear during the early 1920s. It highlights the shift towards a more relaxed silhouette in women's fashion, moving away from structured corsetry to looser styles. The silhouette during this time became more rectilinear with skirts at mid to lower calf length, revealing only women's ankles and lower legs. Daytime outfits typically featured longer sleeves, indicating a trend towards more modest, but less restrictive clothing.
• 22:00 - 29:00: Hats and Hairstyles The chapter titled 'Hats and Hairstyles' appears to focus on the fashion elements of a particular style. It discusses the rectilinear shape of women's bodies, comparing it to a column, which is a recurring theme. The fabric used is described as soft and drapey with a slightly dropping waistline that may be accented with a belt, band, or gathering at the waist. Additionally, there are simple contrasts and trims that are affixed to the garments.
• 29:00 - 37:00: Makeup and Cosmetics The chapter discusses the influence of Greek fashion, specifically the 'kitan look', on modern clothing. It describes the type of dresses typical for women's day wear, which are likely made of cotton and suitable for home lounging or casual socializing at home. Additionally, it touches on styles featured in elite magazines, which are intended for more formal afternoon occasions such as luncheons or garden parties.
• 37:00 - 43:00: Men's Fashion: Formal and Casual Wear The chapter on Men's Fashion: Formal and Casual Wear explores the evolution of men's clothing styles, focusing on both formal and casual options. It provides insights into the materials and designs characteristic of different eras, such as the lightweight, floaty dresses from the early 1920s. These garments, often made from cotton or silk, were distinguished by their simplicity and minimal volume, with elements like gathering and waistline definition enhancing their style.
• 43:00 - 49:00: Sports Wear and Outerwear for Men The chapter 'Sports Wear and Outerwear for Men' discusses the evolution of men's clothing styles over the decades, focusing on the modern trends of thin and translucent materials. It highlights the need for additional garments like slips to maintain modesty under transparent clothing and notes the semi-transparent nature of contemporary dresses. The chapter emphasizes the lightweight nature of current men's fashion trends.
• 49:00 - 53:00: Men's Hairstyles The chapter discusses men's hairstyles, touching upon the intricate details such as insertion lace and floral embroidery seen in fashion. It highlights the influence of art nouveau on everyday women's fashion, while emphasizing that high fashion continued to push boundaries, as seen in images from 'The Gazette de Bon Ton' magazine.

S21 1920s Art Deco Fashion.mp4 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello i'm julie levitt learson for fairfield university's honors course 1101-5 what we leave behind history of fashion architecture and decor and today we're going to be talking about fashion of the 1920s i'm just going to give you kind of a taste of the decade because i know several of you are working on this era for your final projects and i do not wish to steal your thunder and just a reminder about what was going on when
• 00:30 - 01:00 the year 1920 rolled around the world is still recovering from world war one europe in particular is reeling both economically and politically a lot of so-called stable 19th century governments have completely collapsed the us is entering an era of unprecedented prosperity with the exception of farmers and people of color who are being disenfranchised under jim crow but for many in america business is booming
• 01:00 - 01:30 labor unions are gaining strength um and in the aftermath of world war one women in the uk and women in the united states get the right to vote so we're really in a kind of revolutionary time both political economical social um and some would say also a revolution in morality this all gets mirrored in a revolutionary fashion as well so let's start with women's wear of the 1920s
• 01:30 - 02:00 we being 100 years past the 1920s now carrier and a lot of misconceptions about women's fashions we are endlessly fascinated with the great gatsby era and the flapper and prohibition um largely because of some iconic movies um mainly from the 1970s and then in the 2010s but our concept of the 20s flapper girl kind of over simplifies the aesthetic of the area of the era and our memory uh is clouded by kind of
• 02:00 - 02:30 more recent takes and retakes on those fashion sensibilities so let's take a closer look of what was actually worn as i'm sure you remember from recent lectures women's foundation garments have been rapidly changing for a few decades now and we've kind of watched the women's corset slide down her torso for the last couple of decades while we have an even more radical change from even the 1910s and the 19 teens no more corset we now have a brazier which is sometimes called a bando top if
• 02:30 - 03:00 it's strapless and tap pants or knickers or if you can see here on the right a camisole and tap pants are kind of sewn into one garment and they're called combinations or step ins these are made out of light lightweight floaty whispery fabrics you know silk if you can afford it cotton or other you know tried and true undergarment fabrics if you can but obviously a lot less volume a lot less tailoring um and and heavy
• 03:00 - 03:30 shaping and and kind of forcing the human figure into a fashionable form but really just kind of covering women's bodies and you can see that the the bra is compressing the bosom slightly um and we also have girdles that do kind of tend to flatten the tummy they're usually reinforced with rubber um or elastic or some other new wonder fabrics of this modern industrial age and of course they have garters to help hold up stockings but compared to all of that
• 03:30 - 04:00 corsetry and putty coats and all the other stuff that goes with it this is like wearing virtually nothing so in the early 20s this long rectilinear silhouette kind of is continuing you can see the skirt hems are mid to lower calf um they're exposing women's ankle um and lower leg but not much else and then you can see um especially during the daytime sleeves go down to
• 04:00 - 04:30 the elbow um and we have that kind of like i said rector rectilinear shape the woman's body has become a column again like we've seen before um the fabric is kind of soft kind of drapey the waistline is dropping a little bit um you can see it accentuated with a belt or a band or a gathering at the waist and there are lots of very simple um bits of contrast and trim kind of a fixed two
• 04:30 - 05:00 so we're kind of turning back again to that greek kitan look in some ways and in these images the one on the right these are probably cotton dresses for day wear for women that are doing tours around the house um you know maybe entertaining close friends over and then on the left-hand side is from the elite styles magazine so these are more like for afternoon wear for visiting for luncheon for garden party that kind
• 05:00 - 05:30 of social um event and so here are some surviving day dresses from the early 1920s 1920 1921 thereabouts um the one on the right is definitely cotton the one on the left may be cotton maybe silk as you can see they're very lightweight fabrics they're just kind of floaty there's not a whole lot of extra volume in them there's a little bit of gathering and you can see the waistline um but not
• 05:30 - 06:00 at all like what we have seen in past decades they're also quite thin this dress on the left in particular is transparent she would need to wear a slip underneath this so that we didn't see all of her like a mervy is right and the one on the right um i think you can maybe see a little outline of a slip on the dress form um but it's it's also semi-transparent as well so very very light and you can see
• 06:00 - 06:30 these sweet little details with the insertion lace here on the right the lace on her collar we've got some hold over maybe from the art nouveau with these floral embroidery details um on the left but if those examples were what the everyday woman was wearing high fashion of course is continuing to really push the envelope and just go full out into amazingness you can see um these are images from the magazine the gazette de bonton
• 06:30 - 07:00 they are showcasing designs by the house of worth but the fashion illustrator the one who's doing the drawings is not the dress designer it's uh georges barbier who's doing these illustrations and so the fashion illustrator becomes kind of a mover and shaker of fashion as well as designers so kind of carrying on where charles dana gibson um and another artist muka from from the um art nouveau era kind of left off
• 07:00 - 07:30 and you can see these bright bold color combinations these kind of dramatic exotic touches that are included here check out the hairstyle that's changed we'll be speaking to that in a moment um and your kind of beautiful luxurious fabrics and accessories and oh the gorgeous shoes so here are some evening dresses from the early 20s these are designers the one on the left is from kaloser one in the middle is a long
• 07:30 - 08:00 van and the one on the right is worth all from the first years of the 1920s um you can see just luxurious fabric the silk the sequins the embroidery the velvet um the beating um the kind of just gauzy chiffon um that's just kind of like whispering around the body and you can see again this interest in the exotic by those design motifs on the right there um and um some of these these kind of shapes and colors that
• 08:00 - 08:30 we've got going on so after centuries of corsetry that hourglass figure is out of fashion and the woman's body has become kind of a rectangle she there is no discernible difference between the bust line the waistline and the hip line and you can see bare arms bare legs well legs encased in hoes but but um exposed legs bare arms um you know a decolletage
• 08:30 - 09:00 neckline right exposed um neck and shoulders and especially with this one here on the right right we're really interested back to basics back to draping fabric in interesting ways but small amounts of fabric as i was saying you can see this dress here on the right it's almost like we're back to the greek ketone again so there's a lot of freedom of movement in these you can see these dresses kind of want to dance they want to move and the body can move so freely in them um because there's there's no kind of carapace that we've been used to seeing
• 09:00 - 09:30 for the last while i did want to draw your attention though to kind of an alternative 20 silhouette for women's evening wear these are three different images right two existing dresses and one fashion illustration by barbier these two gowns are couture um but one is from the early twenties and one is from the mid twenties um and the barbie illustration is from the very early twenties as well this dress is called the robe to steal
• 09:30 - 10:00 and as you can see it is much fuller in the skirt it's kind of a throwback to that crinoline look from the mid 19th century but of course with a modern tape on it and um so a robe to steel needs some sort of petticoat or crinoline underneath it to hold that volume of the skirt out you can see it quite stylized in the barbie illustration a little bit less um severe in these actual garments right but
• 10:00 - 10:30 still right pulling away from the body and kind of floating about her but you can see the top part of the gown is very similar to those evening dresses that i just showed you in the last slide where they are you know kind of body skimming kind of relatively untailored relatively smooth and kind of floaty and flowy without um you know heavy tailoring around the
• 10:30 - 11:00 body so by mid decade you can see that hemline does creep up but look at where it is this is day wear these these are women photographed in paris um and that hemline is below the kneecap right so we can see bare calf bare shin we can see all the ankle we want and we can see their fabulous shoes um but really just to the knee is what it is that rectilinear boxy shape is still going you can see the waistline
• 11:00 - 11:30 has dropped so that those sashes and belts and um jacket lines are kind of resting along the top of the hip bone their hair has gotten cut short and they're wearing these fabulous hats and we'll talk about some more in a few minutes called cloches so this is really kind of the iconic look of the 20s right here but check out the detail on their dresses they've got pleats they've got layers of flounces they've got some details on collars they dress it up with these necklaces
• 11:30 - 12:00 um you can see that jacket that's paired to go with the skirt so lots of variation within this one style as i've said in recent lectures that the late 19th century and definitely the early 20th century is kind of the rise of the couture designer and we'll talk about several as we go forward in these next few lectures of course you can't really talk about the 20s without mentioning coco chanel i find her a very problematic figure but
• 12:00 - 12:30 her influence on fashion is undeniable so here is her iconic garcon look on the left hand side day wear blouse and skirt and cardigan and cloche hat and then she was also kind of um the originator of the little black dress for evening wear and so here's a chanel sketch for her little black dress that appeared in american vogue magazine
• 12:30 - 13:00 in 1926. so that word garcon is french for boy um now this word garcon it's french for a boy has to do with the 1920s feminine um stylish silhouette and ensemble kind of appearing what we would call today a little gender fluid certainly a far departure from 19th century ideas about feminine
• 13:00 - 13:30 attire and uh presentation um certainly plenty has been written about you know is this um a psychological response to the huge loss of young men from world war one is it just the natural trend that fashion was following all along is it something else i will leave it to you to decide and i bet several of you that are working on the 20s for your papers have come across something to say about this as well if you remember last time i was showing
• 13:30 - 14:00 you how art nouveau motifs and patterns like the whiplash curve were appearing in clothing as they were in architecture you can see that here too kind of art deco geometrics and other design motifs that we'll see in architecture and decor are also appearing on clothes so here are some parisians around 1926 in a chanel suit on the left hand side and then
• 14:00 - 14:30 in dresses on the right hand side and there is a very deco feel to them certainly the 1920s were continuing this trend of high fashion being quickly reproduced and copied kind of down the economic scale for middle class women and working class women and women who could make things at home so here is a page from um a series in a roebuck catalog 1926 showing you day dresses and suits
• 14:30 - 15:00 for women and on the left-hand side you have a french um kind of couture outfitted a dress with a matching coat um which is probably silk and wool and then on the right you have a rayon which is um imitation silk um in this floral patterned daydress so you can have fashion no matter what your income is and the 20s definitely continued the trend of women copying stylish looks at home
• 15:00 - 15:30 um by by printing patterns or drafting patterns and cutting material out and sewing it together themselves so this idea of this one hour dress was kind of all the rage in the 1920s because there was little material and the shapes were relatively simple certainly compared to you know what we were looking at at the 1880s um and even you know the early 1900s it's so much easier to cut these basic shapes and sew them together
• 15:30 - 16:00 even with like these little flounced godays um and this kind of cut out v line on this neck um you can see we're kind of back to those basic shapes where where we're wasting very little fabric to get done what we need to do to make something stylish i had mentioned a few slides earlier that chanel has been credited with inventing the little black dress she certainly wasn't the only one to market it as you can see from these dresses here from the mid-1920s
• 16:00 - 16:30 these are all parisian designers we've we've got the calo sir poiret and vna all giving us their version of the little black dress now you can see the the caption here says little black dress for cocktail hour now i'm hoping you remember from a few lectures ago where i talked about the tea gown right that kind of loosely structured loungewear outfit that women would wear in the late afternoon in between their daytime activities and getting dressed
• 16:30 - 17:00 for the dinner hour when they often had more formal engagements again right and the tea gown was this kind of unstructured dress or dress and robe combination that she could wear with her corset loosened or removed to kind of take a break from all of the strictures of of being fashionably dressed by the 1920s certainly among young women the concept of the tea gown has really disappeared and been replaced by the
• 17:00 - 17:30 cocktail dress not surprisingly right because there's no more corset to relax from between afternoon and evening and remember more young women are working and working in like offices and stores and kind of um white-collar jobs and they needed a quick change from working to evening attire and so um this cocktail dress kind of becomes the answer it starts out as the day dress silhouette in evening fabrics and
• 17:30 - 18:00 this kind of coincides with a kind of relaxing of those victorian ideas of what to do in the evening and formal evening events that instead of formal balls people tend to be drinking and dancing at clubs in a more informal setting so the tea gown is out the cocktail dress is in it is often a little black dress um and this is true even though especially in america where it is technically illegal to
• 18:00 - 18:30 purchase and consume alcohol of course there was plenty of evening attire that wasn't black as you can see by these designer examples here and notice how these dresses shimmer and they are kind of designed um to to kind of dance right there's lots of pieces and and edges and and um shapes on them that move when the body is in motion this is a decade all about
• 18:30 - 19:00 dancing and where in the 1890s and early 1900s we had that gibson girl as kind of the it girl of fashion she gets replaced by the 20th flopper again lots of reasons why she's called a flapper lots of theories anyway um but the flapper is this idea of a youthful vigorous independent young woman that she might be going to college um she's certainly socially kind of sophisticated and is definitely
• 19:00 - 19:30 ready to have some fun you can see here um that that image on the right hand side is a cover of life magazine it's a girl graduating college she's got her cigarette she's got her cocktail she's got her flapper dress on upper left-hand corner an unknown woman in a cocktail dress around mid-decade and look what she's got tucked into her stocking garter it is a flask with illegal prohibited alcohol and in the middle we have uh you know
• 19:30 - 20:00 half a dozen college girls from howard university and you can see how they're all kind of typifying this glamorous um youthful sporty like to have fun kind of sensibility so i've included several pictures of young women in the period dancing or dressed to be ready for dancing and as you can see all of these dresses are below the knee they don't have that kind of string
• 20:00 - 20:30 fringe all over them um and they're not skin tight and super short right you can see that these dresses have some body built into them below the waist um you know like these dresses on the bottom right hand corner which are evening dresses from 1927 there there is definitely volume in that skirt but it's just that of such light fluttery material and it's seamed into that dropped waist that it hangs straight until the dancer is ready to move um and you can see that in the top
• 20:30 - 21:00 left-hand corner her fluttery skirt how how it has some volume when she kicks her legs out so um the image that we're used to of the flapper is really an image from like 1950s movies like singing in the rain or 1970s version of the great gatsby or like i said in the 2000s when we kind of made everything out of uh stretch lace and sequins um but the actual flappers were dancing in some very lovely crafted outfits and as we move on towards the
• 21:00 - 21:30 end of the decade here are some examples of day where that dropped waste really continues as you can see for day wear it's usually going to be a blouse and a skirt maybe paired with a sweater or a jacket or a dress and you can see these are probably summer wear mostly on the left and then towards fall possibly winter on the right um as the body gets more covered up right on the left hand side there's sleeveless
• 21:30 - 22:00 but again that dropped waist continues you can see the belt at the natural waistline but the waistline of the garment is several inches below that you can see the pleated skirt happening there um particularly the third drawing to the right and um you can see just a variety of prints and um kind of contrasting fabrics and some florals some stripes some geometrics in there lots and lots and lots of cool stuff i wanted to show you some examples of
• 22:00 - 22:30 the strands of pearls or beads right these are called lavaliers that 1920s women often wore with their outfits as you could see they could be one long strand that dangles down past the waistline or you could loop several strands of them around your neck to make this multi-strand layer effect real pearls were of course very very expensive and strands this long would have been prohibitively expensive for almost every woman who walked this earth
• 22:30 - 23:00 um but for that lucky one percenter woman they might have been actual pearls if you couldn't afford real pearls glass beads would do fine and the final years of the decade for evening wear you can see um some more variation in style as we're going towards the end of the decade instead of staying right below the knee
• 23:00 - 23:30 that hemline is dipping low again but it's kind of doing that high low asymmetrical look um you can see we're playing with asymmetry in the bodice as well you can see we're playing with asymmetry at the waistline or the dropped waistline in this case um and again that kind of like handkerchief pleating we're turning fabrics on the diagonal to get more volume into um and more flow into a smaller
• 23:30 - 24:00 amount of fabric um and just really um playing around with what the fabric is capable of doing in some ways these dresses feel a little bit more grown up or maturely sophisticated than some of the earlier dresses from earlier in the decade for outerwear a coat that went to at least the hemline of your dress or slightly below it was a good idea
• 24:00 - 24:30 you can see that these coats are all fairly rectangular column like um in their shapes with fairly you know close sleeves not super tight but you know not super bulky sleeves either fur as you can see is a very very popular uh material to have on your coat either a full coat made of fur or a cloth coat trimmed with fur if you could manage it and look at that
• 24:30 - 25:00 gorgeous um kind of jacquard art deco styling on this vintage coat in the middle now of course a lot of women couldn't afford fur or didn't have access to fur so lots of women wore cloth coats as well and coats made out of wool um were certainly um regular items in a woman's wardrobe but check these out these are faux fur coats they are um woolen coats that have been
• 25:00 - 25:30 um woven to imitate the stripes that you see naturally occurring in fur and look at how they've played with horizontal and vertical stripes on that lady on the left look at how they're playing with the scale of the stripes against the body and look at how they're playing with how the coat closes it tends to wrap across the front and and close asymmetrically with just a
• 25:30 - 26:00 few buttons other than that the shape is the same you can see kind of like that continued dropped waist that broad um shawl collar the um kind of relaxed sleeves with wide cuffs or faux cuffs on them and again um you know below the skirt length in most cases wanted to show some shoe love here in this decade shoes were always visible because the hemline has shortened so
• 26:00 - 26:30 considerably um and that kind of victorian boot has has given way to a pump usually two inches or two and a half inches heel um you can see that heel has a little bit of curve to it but it's it's not a stiletto it's got some oomph to it so that you aren't gonna slip and slide on the pavement rounded toes often straps across the top of the foot or down the length of the foot right called the t-strap and they were often highly decorative
• 26:30 - 27:00 like these two-toned pumps um or they would have little flourishes on them cut work in the leather fancy buckles or buttons on them and pretty colors i didn't include many pictures of shoes on this slide because you can go back and look at all the gorgeous footwear in the other slides if you so choose as for hats there was really only one style of hat that really defined this decade the cloche closest the french word for belle and as
• 27:00 - 27:30 you can see um it's a close fitting kind of bell-shaped rounded hat that sits and fully covers the head and then from there you can have a wide variety of brims most of the time um they were kind of narrow brimmed or the brim was turned up so that the face was fully visible but as you can see by this example on the left the brim might turn out a little bit um kind of framing the face
• 27:30 - 28:00 and again they could be lots of different fabrics they could be decorated in different ways they would be trimmed in many different ways and just endlessly gorgeous the reason why the cloche hat was such a persistent hallmark of style in this decade and then on into the 30s a little bit um is because of the changing in women's hairstyles the bob um women started to cut their hair
• 28:00 - 28:30 in the late teens um an actress irene castle had her hair bobbed short and it caught on pretty quickly but really the 20s is the decade of the bobbed hair think of how many centuries women have had long long long hair except for that brief moment after the french revolution when they did that ale victim short kind of pixie cut here we are again but of course there's no one way to bob your hair there are lots of different ways to do it and so here are some examples um
• 28:30 - 29:00 the lady in the bottom right hand corner um is uh i don't know her name um she's his regular woman and she's wearing what's called an earphone faux bob if you look you can see her long hair has been kind of braided coiled twisted up and then pinned in place around her ears to imitate these shorter styles that you can see on this whole page and you can see for straight hair wavy hair curly hair some of them are quite close to the head
• 29:00 - 29:30 some of them are very full um the woman in the bottom left miss katherine dunham she's got what's called our finger waves um and that was done with special curling irons and some homemade like breathing to kind of hold them in place um top right hand corner is uh anime wong and she's got a um what a variation on what was called the dutch bob but as you can see lots and lots and lots of choices woman in the top left hand corner uh unknown woman the style she's got is a
• 29:30 - 30:00 shingle because it's kind of full on the sides and then at the nape of the neck it's really kind of tapered down to to almost nothing but look at she's got a bobby pin kind of holding that lock of hair back um from the side of her face bobby pins are an invention of this decade as well i'm guessing the bob and the bobby pin kind of go hand-in-hand but as you can see this hairstyle was made for the closure the cloche was made for this hairstyle if you had a lot of massive coily
• 30:00 - 30:30 hair that you're trying to deal with you're not going to be able to tuck it up inside that really close fitting hat so there we are which is not to say that women only wore cloches there are a few other styles as well for example the bandeau which is this wide um you know strip of fabric or stiffened decorated fabric like you can see the lady at the top left that's studded with rhinestones um but they could just be as simple as a as a
• 30:30 - 31:00 kind of silky band around the head they tended to sit low over the forehead and kind of cover um the forehead and the bangs they were sometimes known as headache bands because i'm sure they were uncomfortable if you wore them for a long period of time on the right hand side you can see an example of a turban as well right so just wrapping your whole head up in beautiful fabric i wanted to take a minute to discuss makeup because for the first time in about a century
• 31:00 - 31:30 women were kind of consciously choosing to wear obvious makeup we've had this whole century of of so-called natural beauty where women probably were applying subtle cosmetics to their faces um to achieve a you know i just woke up like this kind of healthy look but here in the 1920s women are overtly wearing makeup and and choosing to look
• 31:30 - 32:00 made up so a few things for this decade focus was really on the eyes and the lips people did women did put rouge or blush on their cheeks but really it's all about dramatic eyes and dramatic mouths so you can see here from this photo um and with lips women were drawing um kind of unnatural shape to their that's really um accentuating the curve of the upper lip and then the kind of
• 32:00 - 32:30 rounded curve on the bottom lip so that double arch on the top and then the rounded on the bottom so this is called a cupid's bow or sometimes they're called b stung lips so that so that the lip line was fuller right in the center under the nose and then very very slender to kind of disappearing out towards the um center of the eye where the corner of the mouth is you can see that in that fashion illustration um where there's a self-shaping lipstick that's there to kind of help make that happen and you can see that in the photo
• 32:30 - 33:00 another thing that was new to this decade for a long time was coloring the nails now women all over the world have colored their nails uh for millennia using henna and things like that but now women are using lacquer right nail polish like we still use today so um one thing that's going on in this decade is that um
• 33:00 - 33:30 there are makeup manufacturers and makeup sellers and they're being sold in department stores um and so women are buying um makeup supplies it may be that the film industry really started this trend because of course the 1920s um is is when um film really started to take off because we're able to add sound to the moving picture film we've been around for a decade or two before but now we've got incorporated sound film is still in black and white when
• 33:30 - 34:00 you're shooting in black and white you really have to up the contrast between light and dark areas um on a person on a body um in a scene right to to make um that kind of monochromatic um color scheme work and so with film dark dramatic eyes really showed up contrast dark dramatic lips in a pale face really punched the contrast um dark hair that frames the face in an interesting way
• 34:00 - 34:30 is a big contrast so it's a little unclear how heavily made up actual women were out in the world living their lives versus women on screen or in black and white photos where you kind of had to punch it up if you know what i mean but life imitates art which imitates life which imitates art and so it becomes a chicken and egg kind of question so here are some screen sirens that abara clara beau pola negri and they're all showing you
• 34:30 - 35:00 this very heavily made up look um this is also sometimes called the vamp look that really heavily done smokey eye where there's eyeliner you know really smudgy underneath the lower lid really super dark lips um um hair accessories or hats or head dresses pulled way down low over that brow so that you cannot you can you can barely even see eyebrows right um
• 35:00 - 35:30 the vamp is kind of the the older more jaded sister to the flapper in terms of fashion sensibility um some women did wear it again remember though these are black and white photos for film um and so this may be playing up to a little more extreme than was actually done in real life and one more important note about cosmetics and hair products in this decade for
• 35:30 - 36:00 women madam cj walker was a makeup and hair product entrepreneur designer and she was designing products specifically for women of color textured hair requires different products to stay healthy and strong um and you know here we are 50 60 years after the official end of enslavement women of color were a consumer class and
• 36:00 - 36:30 they were often ignored by the main market of course there's still a lot of segregation going on and women of color were not always allowed into the spaces where cosmetics were being sold madam cj walker saw a client base saw a need developed a line of products became very very wealthy and developed a huge following i'm i'm showing you here an unknown woman with with finger waves um who's probably using madam cj
• 36:30 - 37:00 walker's products and then um up at the top there a photo of miss josephine baker and you can see her hair has kind of been lacquered down and she has these kind of little spit curls and then she's got some very obvious makeup on her face as well um she used her own um formula um and and promoted her own line as well of of hair um lacquer basically
• 37:00 - 37:30 um but you can see for the first time uh an idea that oh women of color have money to spend and deserve beauty products we should probably give a little bit of attention to the men in this decade as we start the decade that sack suit three-piece suit pants jacket vest is the preferred look for business attire and for non-formal day wear right those old victorian rules about formal they wear
• 37:30 - 38:00 continue through here but formal day wear becomes a less common occurrence so you can see here right natural shoulder line that kind of defined waist that's a little bit high a slim cut notched lapels on those jackets dress shirts have turned down pointed collars pants are fairly loose and fairly [Music] wide at the ankle you can stay on the
• 38:00 - 38:30 left hand side these are guys golfing right the guy on the right is wearing a fedora the guy on the left is wearing that soft cap guy on the right is dressed more for business than for golf but the look persists as the decade moves on that kind of nipped in waist look starts to relax a little bit these are some images from um closer to the latter half of the decade to unknown men in harlem you
• 38:30 - 39:00 can see the fedora on the right and um the man on the left is wearing a straw boater beautiful three-piece suits you can see that kind of baggy trouser the cuff um at the hem really shiny shoes some narrow ties right but all three pieces of that suit are the same color and fabric on the right hand side we have uh a group of young men from 1927 from yale the yale whiffenpoofs on the acapella group again you can see here right the suits
• 39:00 - 39:30 are three-piece matching they've got ties that are kind of the only pop of color one guy there's got a watch chain um and check out their not shiny shoes oh well for sport we have these pants called plus fours as you can see they're kind of an exaggerated form of the knickerbockers that we've seen in earlier decades um and then we have something called
• 39:30 - 40:00 oxford bags on the right which are men's dress pants that have just gotten super wide um you can see the the really wide cuff at the bottom there those could measure you know like two to two and a half times unquote normal pair of pants would be around the bottom and the kind of urban legend that goes with this is because oxford students really love to play golf um but the dons of oxford said you couldn't wear knickerbockers in the classroom so they wore
• 40:00 - 40:30 wide-legged treasures over their knickerbockers to save them time getting to the golf course um plus fours they're called plus fours because the idea is that the the pants kind of extend four inches down past the knee then turn back up and get caught in that cuff right below the kneecap so four inches plus um past the knee there are also plus sixes and plus eight i don't know if
• 40:30 - 41:00 this story is true about the oxford bags being worn over plus fours if you look at these plus fours they are super baggy i don't think these oxford bags on the right-hand side could really conceal those but it's kind of a fun urban legend you can see as though even though they're golfing they've got their vest and their shirt on well they're not golfing they're walking down a city street but dressed as if they were about to go golfing another look for that is with this sweater you can see as the waistline of the pants is kind of high that means the sweater is going to be a little bit
• 41:00 - 41:30 short and then here's some sports where both men and women um you can see these pants are cut a little bit more narrow but check out these jackets so well the suit was all three pieces matching there's also developing for casual occasions like sport or lounging around is the sport coat where it's got the same silhouette as a sack coat but it's going to be kind of more
• 41:30 - 42:00 flamboyantly colored and it's going to be a contrasting fabric often paired with white flannel trousers as you see here evening attire for men continues along as we have seen um you can see the tail coat for the formal occasions tuxedos for slightly less tuxedos can be single or double breasted again black tie versus white tie white tie with tails
• 42:00 - 42:30 never black tie with tails so you can see the gentleman here on the white in on the right have white tails and the one gentleman in this fashion illustration has the white tie the other two in their tuxedos or their dinner jackets are black tied trench coats and wool overcoats of course continue on i'm showing you a fashion fad here raccoon fur coats it was a fad among college men this one is a coat that was uh worn to a yale's graduation and
• 42:30 - 43:00 1926. um why raccoon fur i'm guessing because raccoons were plentiful and annoying and so their fur was inexpensive and a little bit about men's hairstyles hair could be parted on the center but most often was parted on the side fairly long on the top fairly short on the sides and to the back and oftentimes slicked back or kind of gelled over with uh
• 43:00 - 43:30 formulations like brian teen um or other kind of like hair oil or hair tonic you can see how shiny their hair is here lots of men were continuing along with a clean shaven look or you could see very thin mustaches like we have um duke ellington there um on the top and on the bottom uh and actress ronald coleman that kind of pencil thin mustache barely there um bottom left is um a photo of a young
• 43:30 - 44:00 langston hughes poet among many other things and he's got that natural curl to his hair so he's just kind of ordered it with some oil um and um kind of that marcel wave like we were seeing in some of the women's styles is also a style for men