Pages

• The Best Dressed Woman
  (The Girl's Own Paper, November 1913)

"For Flo, With Love, & X'mas Greetings, From, Pollie, Dec. 1910" - by Stump & Co. Adelaide
(Photograph of an older, and thus more conservative, lady. Her trailing skirt is too long to be fashionable in 1910. However the straight lines and high waist of her costume is definitely up-to-date.)

Postcards ca. 1910-1911
(There is nothing on these postcards to indicated the date when they were published, but the hats and hairstyles are pretty indicative of the early 1910s. The bandeau, in the centre, was just coming into fashion for evening wear.)

Comic postcards, ca. 1910-1911
(There are no dates on these postcards, but from the postmarks on some of the cards, and the fashions which they are satirising, I am lead to believe they date from around 1911.)

Photograph, ca. 1910-1911.
(This simple summer frock is typical of the 1910s. The broad-brimmed and heavily decorated hat, however, dates the picture to the beginning of the decade.)

Fashions from The Ladies Home Journal, 1911.

Fashion photographs from The Ladies' Field, November 25th 1911

Max Arthur (ed.) Lost Voices of the Edwardians

Fashions from The Delineator, 1911

Photograph, dated Xmas 1911
(The lady on the right, in her tunic dress with elbow length sleeves is right up do date - but, doesn't her dress need ironing! In the days before synthetic fabrics, keeping a pristine appearance was hard work.)

Fashions from The Delineator, 1912

Fashions from Everylady's Journal's "Good Tase Contest", May 1912

Fashion plate from The Designer, August 1912

Fashions illustrated in The Lady, April 1913
(These clothes were available in London stores. From left to right: Robison and Cleaver, Harvey Nichols & Co., and Frederick Gorringe's.)

("There is no law which can limit what custom calls the "little" frock to the really youthful, but every now and again one gets a shock when a supposed "flapper" turns round to reveal herself nearer seventy than seventeen. It is a very curious feature of the age, and I confess it is a question which I cannot settle to my own satisfaction which is for the best and which I prefer, the short skirted, smartly-tripping grandmother of to-day, or the cumbersome full-skirted type of the past."

"The General Adoption of Youthful Dressing : A Fashion Letter from a Fashionable Women,
The Gentlewoman , Aug. 29 1914)

Fashion illustrations from The Lady, April 1913
(From left to right: Spence's, Peter Robinson's, D.H. Evans, Shoolbred's)

"J. Gillies, February 4th, 1913" (photo by Mora of Adelaide).
(Another simple dress, clearing the ground and fairly unrestricted at the waist. The youthfulness and simplicity of this outfit is in marked contrast to the costumes of a mere decade earlier.)

"Real photo" postcard, dated "15-4-13".

(The note on the back reads:
"Dear Jeanie here are the cards we got taken at Wollongong. You would think we had Both got a fright by the look of us. My Pal got married on Saturday. No more at Present. Love from Kate.")

(Though these photographs from 1913 are almost exactly contemporary with the fashion illustrations above, the skirts these women are wearing seem markedly more simple and easy to move in.)

"To Bert with Love from Cissy & Daisy". "Real photo" postcard, circa. 1913-1914
(Two smartly dressed young ladies wearing fairly relaxed styles around the beginning of the First World War.)

*NEW* McCalls 1914

"Schmitt Bros. CIN. O." - Photograph ca. 1914
(A middle class, middle aged couple from the American Midwest. Though conservatively clad, their clothes clearly date from around the beginning of the First World War.)

Hats and bridal headdresses from the Girl's Own Annual, 1914
(The picture of bridal headdresses for "July brides" of 1914 is particularly poignant - World War I was to break out a month later. How many of the brides of 1914 were to become widows before it was all over?)

*NEW* McCalls 1915

("The modish skirt is exceedingly short, as well as very wide; seven inches off the ground is quite a moderate length, and eight or nine inches is no unusual thing on the other side of the world ... It seems quite certain that although we are prepared to welcome the fuller skirt, look with equaminity on the full bodice, and allow the arbiters of fashion to place our waistline where they will, nothing will induce our women of today to even think seriously of the tight-waist, hour-glass effect that was so popular some years ago."

Everylady's Journal, May 1915)

"Aunty Cis Drakeford ... 20.6.15".
(Another "real photo" postcard. This appears to be the same "Cissy" as appears in the photograph circa 1913 above. This time she is dressed in all her evening finery, including an elaborately beaded overskirt.)

Fashions from W. & H. Walker's Bargains for Fall of 1916 catalogue.

(A strange fashion of the time was the "war crinoline" - extremely wide skirts which were reviled for the amount of material they used.)

Fashions from The Delineator, 1916

Casual fashions from Woman's Home Companion, July 1916
(From L-R : "Emerald-green and white wool are used for this smart knitted sweater and cap", "A linen frock and a "beach set" consisting of hat, bag and cushion", and "The very newest sweater, embroidered in tiny cross-stitch flowers, with hatband to match".)

("This is truly the day of the younger generation as regards fashion, for never has it been catered for to such a degree."

Everlady's Journal, September 1917)

"With Love, Ella, 30.3.17"
(The boa adds a fashionable touch to this smart outfit.)

Petit Echo De La Mode, 1917

"With kind regards, From L.K. Jukes, Bishopstone, Salisbury, Nov. 1917"
(Three years into the war, this woman wears clothes noticeably more comfortable and less formal than before the war. With more and more men at the front, women found themselves taking on traditionally masculine jobs and dressing accordingly.)

("Several attempts have been made to re-introduce the plain-length street dress and trailing evening-gown, but it seems as if it will be many years before we return them to favour, if, indeed, such a thing ever comes to pass. The popular skirt, at present, is a loosely pleated one, reaching to just above the ankles. Every-one of all ages wears a skirt which clears the top of her shoes, and such a length is so universally comfortable, youthful and graceful that it is likely to be a very long time before women give it up ... The size of the waist, by the way, used to be a very important point. Nowadays it is absolutely of no consequence. The smartest women even appear as if they were corsetless, and the hips are left quite free."

Everylady's Journal, February 1918.)

Patterns available through The Ladies' Home Journal, March 1918

"To Lily & Bev, With best love from your loving Sister Pearl, 1918"

Photograph, ca. 1917-1918
(Modern woman steps out. Variations on her neatly tailored skirt and blouse would still be worn by business and professional women in the 21st century.)

("There are two kinds of sports clothes in evidence this season; those which are donned by the girl on pleasure bent (maybe only when "off duty") and those strictly utilitarian garments which are necessary for the energetic woman-worker to carry on her task in some degree of comfort. These latter nearly all incline to khaki and are modelled on an almost military severity of outline; the sort of thing, in fact, a girl gets into when she wants to show her soldier brother that she is one of those who are ready to "do their bit"..."

Everylady's Journal, March 1918.)

"Del Jardin Zoologico, Buenos Aires ... 14-2-1918"
(Stylish South American ladies wearing fashionable day dress. The woman standing on the left wears casual, sportswear-like dress which anticipates the 1920s; her seated companion, on the other hand, appears to hark back to the pre-war years.)

From The Ladies Home Journal, June 1919.

Advertisement, 1919.
(Leisure wear from an American advertisement.)

Petit Echo de la Mode, 1919
(Inside these magazines were articles and diagrams for the thrifty housewife, depicting ways she could convert the full dresses of wartime into the slimmer lines of the post-war years. )

"Zelda Cox, Zelda Avery, Stuart Halliday, 3/6/19".
(And leisure wear on a British beach - this postcard was marked "Aldershot". Though the women in this picture still wear shoes and stockings on the sands their clothing is relaxed and casual by earlier standards.)

"Bold teenage girls, a type never encountered before (folks were scandalized) earning plenty of money, and foot-loose young housewives began to use face creams - 'Icilma', 'Silver Foam' - even powder and dabs of rouge. My eldest sister, gone early in the war out of a cotton mill into the rich pickings of engineering, used cosmetics surreptitiously until one evening the old man caught her with a whole 'Dorothy' bag of the stuff. He threw the lot in the fire. The house, we understood, had been defiled. Hadn't Joe Devine (a neighbour), he thundered, 'turned his daughters into the street for using this muck?' Never again must she dare..."

"Jenny stood unperturbed. 'I either go on using it,' she said, 'or you can turn me out too.'"

Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum