New Idea, Spring 1920

 Happy New Year!

I've been giving some thought as to what I'm going to do with this blog in 2026, and I've decided to try a little experiment.  I'm going to (try to) work my way chronologically, a year each week, through my favourite fashion decades of the twentieth century.  Here, to start with, are some very pretty outfits from Spring 1920.  By the end of the year I hope to get all the way to the 1970s.

So, what was the well dressed woman wearing in 1920?

According to Vogue:

Very interesting are the new features of the mode, although no "radical change," as they say, has yet taken place.  However, the skirt, both of the dresses for daytime and of the evening gown, is lengthening perceptibly, and while it is not long by any means, is undeniably longer.  This rule applies to the sleeve, as well as to the skirt, and in many of the spring costumes the long tight-fitting sleeve is again in favour.

"The New York Mode Has Its Spring Premiѐre", Vogue, March 15 1920

Harper's Bazaar had this to say:

WIDER SKIRTS — LOW WAIST-LINES — MUCH DRAPERY — TINY PUFFED SLEEVES — SO THE PARIS OPENINGS DECREE

So far the short skirt triumphs.  Skirts are short and many are straight and slender in silhouette, though actually much wider than last season... Many skirts are plaited and fall straight.  Inch wide box-plaits and accordion-plaits are employed by the different houses this year.

The waist-line is generally placed at the top of the hips and often about the broadest part of the hips—in the form of a girdle tied in front or on the side...

Jackets vary from a brief, collarless, short sleeve bolero or Eton to a knee-length coat, fitted to the waist-line and flaring below.  Some are very short and close-fitting to the waist-line, rippling out sharply over the hips... In all jackets this season there is a surprising absence of the belt and a tendency—sometimes little more—to width at the hips.

Harper's Bazaar, April 1920

Writing for a less elite readership, the Australian Home Journal voiced its opinions on trimmings:

Embroidery takes its toll of the new fashions and there is very little that escapes it, that is, if you will agree to allow beading to come under that general head... 
The passion for fringe has not left us, but it no longer has that ugly, ragged appearance, for it is now all arranged in loops.  It varies from one to six inches in length, and can be had in all colours.  It has a pretty old-fashioned appearance, and is being used on hats and scarfs, as well as for dress trimmings.

"Fashions", The Australian Home Journal, January 1920

Everylady's Journal concurred:

Fringe is used very largely as a means of trimming [coat frocks] and when it cannot be obtained to tone exactly, the fabric is often ravelled, then doubled or trebled and knotted to form the desired trimming.

"The Month's Fashions Reviewed", Everylady's Journal, January 1920

Evening gowns, indeed, have an amazing tendency to frilliness.  Of sheer net, for instance, one dress of cornflower blue is nothing but a series of tiny frills mounted one above the other...

Gowns With No Backs
The latest craze in Californian society is dorsiculture.

It remained for the coming opera season and the new backless designs in women's evening dress to incite the dorsicure, the official title of the person who is skilled in caring for the backs of the fair sex... that no woman need approach the backless evening gown in fear and trembling...

The Australian Home Journal, February 1920

 Backless evening dresses made their debut during the First World War, and though they appear to have  survived into the 1920s, they didn't really come into their own until the 1930s.  But that, as they say, is a story for another day.