100 Years Ago (The Delineator, October 1922)

 Through this series I've been looking at the fashions of 1922 through the medium of Butterick patterns.  These fashions were everyday fashions, available to anyone with a bit of know-how and the money to buy the pattern and some material.  However, at this date the clothes worn by ordinary women ultimately derived from High Fashion, or Haute Couture, which was only worn by an elite few.  During the 1920s, and for some decades afterwards, fashion was set in Paris. Anyone who aspired to be in the least fashionable kept an eye on what was coming out of the great ateliers of France, which is why The Delineator dedicated a few pages each issue to fashion reportage.

Here are a few Paris designs as described in The Delineator in October 1922.

A narrow skirt of the new length wrapped around the figure, a bloused coat with a belt that rests upon the hip, a chin collar and a pair of excessively smart top boots of fine wrinkled leather and you have Drecoll's idea of a winter costume á la mode.  It is of beige poplatrefine, with a collar of mole.

Drecoll embroiders a primrose yellow velvet with arabesques of white porcelain and dull crystal beads.  A black chiffon scarf falls and flutters in a cascade held at the hip with great ornaments of black jet.  The body makes its own sleeve and the décolletage is the familiar Grecian line.

Patou's dresses are exceedingly simple, but they have an extraordinary cachet from their hand-work, often in the form of insertions of crochet silk that looks like fagotting, of braid or embroidery or of fabric trimming.  On a dress of velveteen he simulates bretelles on the blouse and a tablier on the skirt with insertions of narrow braid and hand embroidery.

With that nicety of design, Patou follows the lines of a plaited skirt with a tablier of narrow tucks in the lower part of the jacket of a Winter suit.  The coat blouses a little at the low waistline, the skirt is longer than last year, and the material is beige velours de laine trimmed with astrakan.

A coat that might be taken as the definition of the coat silhouette of the year is wide through the body, deep through the arm and narrow, but of the same width from its hip to the hem.  It is made of beige buracotta and is trimmed in cape effect at the back with bands of castorette.  From Béchoff.

Russian in line and color and a magnificence that stops just short of the barbaric is an evening cloak of red cloth lined with blue crêpe and embroidered with blue and silver tinsel thread.  The waistcoat and edging are of a brown fur called "mundel" or marmot and the coat is from Béchoff.