1920s Fashion Research Paper

The 1920s were a period of unbridled optimism with people looking to the future and putting their trust in technological progress. The First World war had changed the very fabric of society, and in its wake had brought women unprecedented freedoms, and , of course , this was reflected in the fashions they choose to wear. From silk sack dresses and T-bar shoes to tight-fitting cloche hat and elegantly casual sportswear. The story of Fashion is never just a story of fashion. Fashion is part of culture, and it`s not created in an ivory tower. It is a visual language , full of clues were we can read about the morals and values of the society that produced it.No other decade is quite so alive and vivid in popular consciousness as the 1920s;

His designs abandoned the S-line corset; he himself hailed this as his triumph, however it need to be noted that for the majority women, save those with boyish narrow figures, this was simply replaced with straighter elasticated corsets that flattened curves and were not necessarily any more comfortable. Whilst Poiret’s pre-war creations introduced simplicity of silhouette, they were ultimately still very intricate, elaborate and extremely luxurious in regards to construction ,materials and embellishment. Nevertheless his idea of simplifying female attire was taken up and taken to new level by Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. She was a visionary designer in her own right but she also understood the ideas and needs brought about by the war and translated these into dress. Chanel created two-piece skirt suits with the jacket based on a man’s army jacket, with little intrinsic embellishment except the use of the most luxurious of fabrics available at that time. Jersey proclaimed functionality and facilitated

Firstly, there was an exponential rise in home dressmaking, as women with little or even no experience could now tackle a dress project with relative ease and produce simple garments.The second consequence of the silhouette simplification was the easier, high-volume production of ready-to-wear clothing. The war had greatly advanced production techniques as large volumes of quality uniforms had to be produced in small spaces of time. This knowledge and experience would be applied to the growing ready-to-wear industry of the 1920s.Sizing had also got somewhat better, although there was still no such thing as standard dress sizes and most manufactures made up their own sizing system which was often based on little, inaccurate or no body data at all.Fashion is never just about clothes; they need a body to animate them.In this way, to explore fashion is to explore the intimate relationship between body and fabric. By examining the design and style of clothes we can read the beauty ideals of any given time, as clothing is always designed with the ideal body in mind. In the 1920s, it’s clearly apparent only a slender frame would do: the lack of tailoring around the waist, later the dropped waist, the flat dresses that hid the breasts…the ideal body of period was definitely slender and