This is an Essay on Women's Fashion from the 1920's. Not only does it describe material fashion but also hairstyles.

Essay by ThabreeHigh School, 11th gradeA+, January 2004

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Women's Fashion in the 1920's

In the early twenties, the features of women's clothing were short skirts and dropped waistlines. The silhouettes of the earlier part of the 1920's are long and cylindrical, with the skirt falling 7" to 10" below the knee. The wide variety of details in the simple style were astonishing because they portrayed an imaginative range of cuts and trims. The long straight style had many variations. One of the extremely popular fashions was the Basque dress or Robe de style. This dress style is best known from the designer Jeanne Lanvin. It is sort of a line between the straight twenties silhouette and the old fashioned belled-skirt. It had a tubular bodice that hung or draped straight down to a dropped waist, then a full skirt ( not bias cut, but with gathers at the waist ) and it ended at mid-calf or ankle.

These were very popular for the afternoon or evening wear.

In the Mid twenties the silhouette of the early twenties fashion was still used in the shirtwaist and skirt mode of the teens. It was high in fashion that the long straight silhouette started to get old. As the decade continued, the long straight shape moved to a day time wear. Then evening wear became straighter and shorter, after which daytime wear copied it. It was in the evening wear that the innovations of the twenties style first appeared. By 1926, women were starting to wear dresses above their knees. This is when the modern fashion concept of the flapper first appeared. The name "flapper", meant a young modern women who went out on dates without a chaperone, wore fashionable clothes, wore make-up, and possibly had a job had already made appearances as early as 1919. The "bob" haircut...