1920's Women 1920's Women's Fashion Flappers

Flappers of the 1920s were young women known for their energetic liberty, embracing a lifestyle viewed by many at the time as outrageous, immoral or downright unsafe. Now considered the first generation of independent American women, flappers pushed barriers in economic, political and sexual freedom for women.

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Women's Independence

Multiple factors—political, cultural and technological—led to the rising of the flappers.

During World War I, women entered the workforce in large numbers, receiving higher wages that many working women were not inclined to give up during peacetime.

In August 1920, women'due south independence took another stride forward with the passage of the 19th Subpoena, giving women the right to vote. And in the early 1920s, Margaret Sanger made strides in providing contraception to women, sparking a wave of women's rights to birth command.

The 1920s also brought virtually Prohibition, the issue of the 18th Amendment ending legal booze sales. Combined with an explosion of popularity for jazz music and jazz clubs, the stage was fix for speakeasies, which offered illegally produced and distributed alcohol.

Henry Ford's mass production of cars brought downwards automobiles prices, allowing the younger generation far more than mobility than in earlier eras. Many people, a number of them young women, drove these cars into cities, which experienced a population boom.

With all these pieces in place, an unprecedented social explosion for young women was all but inevitable.

What Is a Flapper?

No one knows how the word flapper entered American slang, but its usage first appeared just following World War I.

The classic image of a flapper is that of a stylish immature party daughter. Flappers smoked in public, drank alcohol, danced at jazz clubs and practiced sexual freedom that shocked the Victorian morality of their parents.

Flapper Dress

Flappers were famous—or infamous, depending on your viewpoint—for their rakish attire.

They donned fashionable flapper dresses of shorter, dogie-revealing lengths and lower necklines, though not typically class-fitting: Straight and slim was the preferred silhouette.

Flappers wore loftier heel shoes and threw away their corsets in favor of bras and lingerie. They gleefully applied rouge, lipstick, mascara and other cosmetics, and favored shorter hairstyles like the bob.

Designers like Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Patou ruled flapper fashion. Jean Patou's invention of knit swimwear and women's sportswear like lawn tennis dress inspired a freer, more relaxed silhouette, while the knitwear of Chanel and Schiaparelli brought no-nonsense lines to women'due south vesture. Madeleine Vionnet'due south bias-cut designs (made by cut textile against the grain) emphasized the shape of a woman's torso in a more natural way.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald found his place in American literary history with "The Great Gatsby" in 1925, but he had already garnered a reputation before that as a spokesperson for the Jazz Age.

The press at the time credited Fitzgerald equally the creator of the flapper because of his debut novel, "This Side of Paradise," though the book didn't specifically mention flappers.

The credit stuck and Scott began to write almost flapper culture in short stories for the Saturday Evening Postal service in 1920, opening up the Jazz Historic period lifestyle to middle-form homes.

A drove of these stories was published that twelvemonth nether the title "Flappers and Philosophers," cementing Fitzgerald every bit the flapper expert for the side by side decade.

Zelda Fitzgerald

If Fitzgerald was considered the chronicler of flappers, his wife Zelda Fitzgerald was considered the quintessential example of one.

A native of Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda was a fashionable, free-spirited young woman who met Fitzgerald in 1918 while he was stationed there in the war machine. She was 17 at the fourth dimension and—as the girl of a prominent local judge—her hedonistic escapades scandalized her family.

The pair was married in New York City 1 month after "This Side of Paradise" was released and shortly embarked on a lifestyle of reckless partying and publicity-seeking in Europe and beyond America.

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Both publicly claimed that Zelda was Fitzgerald's inspiration for all his female person characters, bringing her in as much demand for her insight every bit he was. She was before long writing articles about the "mod" flapper lifestyle.

Lois Long

Lois Long was another writer chronicling flapper civilisation in impress. Using the pseudonym Lipstick, Long began writing for The New Yorker soon after its inception.

Her work chronicled the life of a flapper and recounted her real-life adventures drinking and dancing all night long. She typically wrote her column—showtime named "When Nights Are Bold" and "Tables For Two," launched in 1925—directly later her nights out, typing into the wee hours.

Flappers in Advert

Recognizing that women at present had disposable incomes of their own, advertising courted their interests beyond household items. Soap, perfume, cosmetics, cigarettes and fashion accessories were all the subjects of ads targeting women.

Helen Lansdowne Resor was the well-nigh powerful woman in ad at the time. The head of women's advert at the J. Walter Thompson Agency, she worked her way up from secretary thanks to her keen understanding of selling to women. She was the get-go advertizing executive to push sex appeal as a method of marketing to women, often focused on getting male person attention.

Flapper style regularly graced the covers of magazines like Vanity Off-white and Life, drawn by artists similar John Held and Gordon Conway.

Flappers on Moving-picture show

Anita Loos' book "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and its follow-up "Only Gentlemen Marry Brunettes" were famous satires of the world of flappers. The books focused on flapper Lorelei Lee and her male conquests. The first film version of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" was released in 1928 (some other version was released in 1953, starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell).

The popularity of movies exploded during the 1920s, though the screen versions of flappers were typically less permissive than the real-earth versions. The commencement pop flapper movie was "Flaming Youth," released in 1923 and starring Colleen Moore, who was soon Hollywood's "go-to" extra for playing flappers onscreen.

Louise Brooks auditioned for a office in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" but failed. However, the epitome of Brooks and her precise bob has go the archetypal vision of a flapper. The Hollywood portion of her pic career featured several starring flapper roles before she moved on to more serious dramas.

The 'It' Girl

Clara Bow's nickname was "the It Girl," referring to her 1927 picture "It," which was adjusted from a magazine article by Elinor Glyn. Bow was the most successful screen flapper, beloved for the unpretentious manner of her portrayals and her frank sex activity entreatment.

Anna May Wong bankrupt barriers equally the offset Chinese-American movie star. Her image equally a flapper off-screen was encouraged by pic studios to increase her entreatment across the exotic roles in which they bandage her.

Dancing was a crucial office of flapper civilisation. The Charleston and the Blackness Bottom were popular and considered more than suggestive than whatsoever moves that had come before. The acclaimed 1923 British play "The Dancers," which starred Tallulah Bankhead, examined the dance obsessions of two flappers.

Criticism of Flappers

Not anybody was a fan of women's newfound sexual liberty and consumer ethos, and in that location was inevitably a public reaction confronting flappers.

Utah attempted to pass legislation on the length of women's skirts. Virginia tried to ban whatsoever dress that revealed also much of a woman's pharynx and Ohio tried to ban form-fitting outfits.

Women who populated beaches in bathing suits that were deemed inappropriate were escorted off the beach by police or arrested if they refused.

Pop Washington, D.C., hostess Mrs. John B. Henderson attempted to starting time a mass move confronting what she considered vulgar fashions, appealing to prominent women's clubs and colleges for help.

Clergymen like Rabbi Stephen Due south. Wise and Baptist pastor Dr. John Roach Straton became known for their tirades against young women'southward fashions.

Flappers likewise received criticism from women'southward rights activists like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Lillian Symes, who felt flappers had gone too far in their embrace of licentiousness.

End of the Flappers

The age of the flapper came tumbling down suddenly on Oct 29, 1929, with the stock market crash and the start of the Corking Depression. No i could beget the lifestyle any longer, and the new era of frugality made the freewheeling hedonism of the Roaring Twenties seem wildly out of touch with grim new economical realities.

Many film-star flappers had already met their terminate two years earlier with the advent of talking film, which was not always kind to them. The Hays Code in 1930, which severely limited sexual themes in movies, made independent women in the flapper mold almost impossible to portray onscreen.

Sources

Flapper. Joshua Zeitz.
Flappers: A Guide To An American Subculture. Kelly Boyer Sagert.
Flappers and the New American Adult female. Catherine Gourley.
A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America. Jenna Weissman Joselit.