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New Idea Quarterley, Spring 1920

Sears Roebuck 1921
Sears Roebuck "The Bargain Counter" catalogue, 1921


Perry, Dame & Co. catalogue, winter 1920-21
 (At the beginning of the decade, an elegant flapper and her beaus, who look rather like the heroes of an early F. Scott Fitzgerald story.)


Dressing in the morning, especially for busy housewives, is made a very much more simple proceeding, nowadays, than it used to be; just a skirt, with one fastening at the waist, and a slip on jumper without any fastenings at all, and one is ready for the morning's work in less time than it takes to write about it! No long plackets, no belt, no collars or ties or cuffs to be fastened, no broach or hook or button or pin - we hardly know ourselves these days!

Everylady's Journal, December 1921


Mode Pratique, 1922

Skirts are decidedly longer, and most of the new models reach to within a few inches of the ankles. Short skirts are not worn by women who know how to dress well nowadays, though compared to the fashions of twenty years ago, what we call a long skirt would then have been considered almost indecently short!

Everylady's Journal, June 1922

The outstanding feature of the new Spring fashions is the uniformity of the line seen in all the frocks; they are, almost without exception, cut in the one-piece "chemise" style - as far as foundation is concerned, at all events - and then elaborated according to fancy.

Everylady's Journal, September 1922


Pochoir prints from La Gazette du Bon Genre, 1922

Beads are being used tremendously this year and in almost every possible way. Our frocks are not a bit fashionable - apparently - unless they are heavily adorned with beads or bugles, while bead girdles, beaded bags, beaded shoes and even stockings are not by any means uncommon.

Everylady's Journal, October 1922


The National Money Saving Style Book, Spring and Summer 1923


Photograph ca. 1923
(By 1923 the straight lines typical of women's fashions in the 1920s were well established, but clothes were still fairly long and loose fitting. This outfit looks as if it was intended for a formal occasion: a wedding, maybe, or a garden party.)


Fashions from The National Suit & Cloak Co. Catalogue, Spring and Summer 1924

 

"All the young women at the office were having their hair cut short. First it was one department, then another. On a Monday morning we would see them arriving with hats no longer poised on rolled-up buns, but stupidly, amusingly bumping over a void. The slightest movement would turn these rudderless hats round. The bit of fur on the coat collar rubbed against freshly shaved necks full of hard bristles and not yet toned down by air and sun. Each new victim was taken to the ladies' cloak-room to be examined. We were not sure whether we liked it but we knew our turn would come. My mother kept on saying: 'It's really too great a shame!'"

Mrs Robert Henrey, The Little Madeleine


Everylady's Journal, October - December 1924


Weldon's Ladies' Journal, Xmas-New Year 1924-1925


Everylady's Journal, January - March 1925


Elite Styles, May 1925


Australian Home Journal, June 1925


The Charles William Stores New York Styles, Fall and Winter 1925

"Youth and Middle Years" - Should the woman past forty avoid certain colors, certain outlines, certain proportions in dress - just because she is past forty? The feeling used to be that a woman "old enough to be a grandmother" was either a little weak-witted or of questionable character who continued to dress substantially like a young woman.

Seemingly very few women feel like that nowadays. There is no reason now why a woman of forty-odd need feel foolish in a frock substantially like that of her twenty-year-old daughter - unless, of course, she looks foolish in it; and that is more a matter of weight and contour than of age."

The Australian Woman's Mirror, October 6, 1925


*NEW* Australian Home Journal, 1926


*NEW* Weldon's Ladies' Journal, 1926


Photograph, "30th May 1926".
(This group photograph - of a social or church group? - shows people of all ages and both sexes in a variety of fashions. The girl in the centre of the front row is particularly fashionable with her permed hair, suntan and slave bangle, but the woman on the right end of the same row is also stylish with a string of beads setting off her dress.)


McCall Style News, 1927


Everylady's Journal, June 1927.


Weldon's Ladies' Journal, August 1927


*NEW* Fashion Service 1927


Modern Priscilla, October 1927


Photographs, ca. 1927-1929
(When people think of fashions in the 1920s, these ladies in their short, simple dresses with dropped waistlines, are the sort of pictures they conjure up. However this style of dressing only lasted a few short years at the end of the decade. Some of these sitters, by the way, were probably trussed up in Edwardian corsets, whalebone and petticoats a little more than a decade earlier. )


Mode Pratique, 1928


Fashions from an unkwown British magazine, Autumn 1928
(Unfortunately I am unable to discover the name of this magazine, but it is probably Woman's Journal which began catering to a middle class audience in 1927. The plates depict the latest fashions from Paris. The captions to the pictures indicated that cloth patterns were available for readers who wished to make up their own versions of these styles.)


McCall Style News, December 1928


Fashions from Weldon's Ladies' Journal, January 1929


NEW - Butterick Fashion News, May 1929


Fashions from Mabs Fashions, July-August 1929
(Fashions just before the end of the twenties - when hems fell, feminine curves came back into style, and modish women become "ladylike" once again.)

"And nowhere did young emancipation flash itself more openly than in dress. Evening found teenage girls massed round the new-laid dance floors in their knee length skirts, silk stockings and vee-necked blouses. A man, these days, complained one shocked pensioner in the shop, '- a decent man - doesn't know where to put his eyes."

Robert Reed, The Classic Slum