The 1920s

Here is the second part of my essay on nineteen twenties fashion from school.

Fashion in the 1920s
           In the nineteen twenties, fashions became drastically reduced to simplicity from the restrictive, excessively ornate clothes of the Victorian era. In the 1920s, women's hair was bobbed and cloche hats were pulled tightly on top of them, wastlines dropped from the waist down to the hips, stockings were transparent, silhouttes were tubular, high heels were worn, makeup was applied, and, most shockingly of all, hemlines rose to around mid-calf for the majority of the decade (Miller, Brandon Marie 62, Lesieutre 164, Lesieutre 164, Miller, Brandon Marie 62, Drowne and Huber 99, Latham 20, Lesieutre 164).

i. The Beginning
            Victorian fashion begann its slow deadly march toward the 1920s when fashion designer Paul Poiret opened his first shop in 1903. Poiret designed clothes that were easy and fluid, much in contrast with the stiffness of the Victorian clothes surrounding him, and began to convince women to do away with thier constricting corsets (Lesieutre 163). Poiret further began to move fashions away from Victorian and toward La Garconne (the tomboy) look of the nineteen twenties (Zeitz 156) when he began designing dresses with a vertical silhouette that emphasized slimness instead of the exaggerated houreglass shape popular in the Victorian age (Lesieutre 164). With these innovations in fashion that showed women how easy clothes could be, they would never return to the restriction that had plagued them for so long before.