Flappers in focus

By Kassia St Clair

Asked what women wore during the 1920s, most people would picture the same thing: a drop-waisted dress, low-heeled Mary Jane shoes, a long string of pearls and a headband decorated with a diadem and a curling feather. “1920s Jazz Age: Fashion and Photographs”, a new exhibition at the Fashion and Textiles Museum in London, shows why this is such a persistent image of an era bookended by the first world war and the Great Depression.

Designers were making clothes that reflected profound social and cultural change. The corseted silhouette of Victorian and Edwardian times was already becoming looser before the first world war, as simpler fashions and the drive for women’s suffrage caught on. The war, which forced women to enter the workforce in greater numbers, sped up the revolution: long skirts and trailing sleeves were serious impediments around factory machinery or on the farm.