The 1920s were thrust into the limelight in 2013 with the remake of The Great Gatsby. However, with the film’s costume designer, Catherine Martin, admitting herself that she did not go into minute detail of replicating the exact fashion from the ‘Roaring Twenties’, what is that fashion era all about?
Fashion became more attainable for the normal woman after World War I. The styles were much simpler, and therefor easy to recreate, so when we think of the style of the 1920s we are thinking of what the ordinary women wore rather than just the richest of society.
At the mention of 1920’s fashion, we immediately picture the ‘Flapper’ fashion of the shapeless shift dress, short sleek hair and perfectly glamourous makeup, but this style didn’t actually come into play until later on in the decade. In the early twenties, dresses and coats were much longer than we think – calf length, and conservative. Hemlines gradually began to rise, and then the radical movement of cutting hair into short bobs to fit under the cloche hat.
The waistlines of the shift dresses began to fall, and the knife-pleated skirts came into play in the Charleston era. The ‘boyish’ figure was popular, the low waistlines helping to disguise the bust rather than accentuate it. Underwear was changed to support this; the corset was abandoned and replaced by a camisole with knickers then later developed into all-in-one lingerie.
Coco Chanel was undoubtedly the fashion queen of the 20s. As one of the first to cut her hair, wear trousers (shock horror!) and rejected the old fashioned corset, she led the fashion forward era. Chanel’s staple cardigan jacket was released in 1925, following on from the world famous fragrance of Chanel No 5 that was launched in 1922.
The 1920s proved to be a very bohemian era for fashion, with ideas that were many years ahead of the time. Possibly the most influential decade for women, the changing styles following the women’s movement and almost bolstering it along. Can fashion really be that influential?