1920’s Women’s Sportswear

One reason for changing attitudes towards women’s sports was the popularity of certain sports. As early as 1921, Alice de Linière informed readers about the multiplication of women’s tennis, golf, grass hockey, and soccer clubs. Her attitude towards these sports wavered between the old anxiety about the deleterious effect of exercise exertion on women’s reproductive organs and the new ideal of a flexible, youthful body. She resolved the conflict be concluding that “only rationally practised sports can develop and maintain the suppleness and elegance of the figure and the youth of the body”.(1)

Maureen Orcutt swinging her golf club, 1920’s

Additionally, sports have their fashions, their specialized, slightly boyish fashion. The addendum identifies the main reason for fashion magazines’ interest in women’s sports: Haute Couture and confection were promoting a whole new line of women’s clothing called sports clothes.(1)

Designers largely appropriated men’s fashions to create women’s outdoor clothing, including serge or tweed knickers to wear while hiking and flared jodhpurs to wear while horseback riding. Women golfers wore pleated, knee-length skirts topped with patterned sweaters and flat, oxford-style, rubber-sole shoes. (2)

April 18, 1925. “Miss Louise Ireland & Miss Helen Marye.” wearing jodhpurs.

Culottes, with pleated legs that hung together to look like skirts, made skiing possible for respectable women in the 1920’s. Although pleats obscured separated legs, a few fashion reporters called them “semi-masculine”, and Ramon Fernandez called them a “symbol of feminism”. By 1928, ever major couture house showed sports culottes. In a short-lived journal called ‘La Femme, le Sport, la Mode’, Jane Saint – Roman proclaimed “this rather masculine outfit no longer frightens anyone”. Although wearing “culotte skirts” to bicycle in the city was still associated with modern women, now women on bicycles were “an everyday feature of our life”. (1)

Example of women’s sports culottes, circa 1926

Tennis players sported flat, rubber-soled shoes, white hose, and short, slim dresses made of white rayon, cotton, or silk. (2)

Women’s Tennis Team 1920’s

Professional tennis player Suzanne Lenglen (1899-1938) affected clothing styles. Lenglen is widely recognised as “the best woman tennis player ever”. Yet all reporters paid as much attention to her chic as to her techniques. Women’s magazines in particular commented upon her mid-calf and short-sleeved outfits and her collaboration with the couturier Jean Patou. Until Suzanne Lenglen arrived at Wimbledon after the Great War, the major innovations in ladies tennis wear had been the elimination of bustles and hats. Lenglen’s appearance at Wimbledon in a Patou chemise dress, without a corset or petticoat, “influenced all future tennis fashion”. As director of the sports department at Patou’s house, Lenglen proposed a knee-length, pleated tennis skirt, which became the prototype for sports skirts. (1)

Suzanne Lenglen, October 1926

By 1925, Patou, Premet, Lucien Lelong, and two other couture houses had developed special sports lines. Although Patou was subsequently associated with dresses with natural waistlines, fuller skirts, and longer hemlines, he opened the first sports boutique. Similarly, Lanvin, Vionnet, and Shciaparelli, remembered today for other kinds of clothing, showed many sports outfits in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s.(1)

Suzanne Lenglen shows how to Dress for Tennis. Vogue Dec 01 1926 – Jean Patou creations

For ordinary casual wear, women wore long soft blouses that were often banded or belted at the natural waist. Women also adopted the middy blouse, which resembled the tip half of a sailor’s uniform and was a traditional style for children’s clothing. (2) Learn more about the middy top here.

May 14, 1925. Washington, D.C. “Western High School fencing team.” wearing middy tops.

The vest-style blouse, patterned after a man’s vest, had long or short sleeves and a notched collar. These blouses could be worn either outside or tucked into the waistband of a skirt or knickers. Another man’s style, the lumberjack shirt, made of wool plaid and typically worn with knickers, also found its way into women’s casual wardrobes. In cool weather, women (like men) donned colourful Fair Isle sweaters, popularized in 1922 by Edward, Prince of Wales, or coat sweaters, introduced by Coco Chanel, which are cardigan-style sweaters with a high shawl collar, pockets, and sometimes a belt. (2)

Glenna Collett Vare photographed during the 1925 Ladies’ British Open Amateur Championship wearing a Fair Isle style jumper.

Sources:

(1) Dressing Modern Frenchwomen: Marketing Haute Couture, 1919-1939 by Mary Lynn Stewart, 2008

(2) The 1920s (American Popular Culture Through History) by Kathleen Drowne and Patrick Huber, 2004

1920’s Fashion and Rebellion Article

A smart observer of the passing scene typed these words about the social revolution that he had been witnessing for the past six years:

“Some time ago in these pages I expressed the opinion that, so far from it being likely that the future we would see all women wearing trousers, it was much more probable that it would see all men wearing skirts…It is not many years since hockey-skirts reaching below the knees, with voluminous and ugly bloomers as a second line of defense, were regarded as a little risky…I say again that [today’s fashion] is a phenomenon which the social historian appears to be passing over. We do not realize that a tradition of centuries has within a decade been stood its head…”

“The Revolution in Dress” by Edward Shanks – 29th of August 1925, The Saturday Review

How funny and interesting it is to read this today?

Source.

1920’s Women’s Pyjamas – Photographs

Good morning! Here’s some amazing photographs showing the best of 1920’s pyjamas’ fashion!

Ina Clare, 1925 by Edward Steichen.

Joan Crawford

Ruth Taylor in her Pajamas, c.1928, by Eugene Robert Richee

Thalia Barbarova, 1925

Evelyn Brent in luxurious lounging pyjamas.

1920’s Women’s Pyjamas

Even though it was not acceptable for a woman to wear trousers, except for practising sports, in 1922 Paul Poiret showed pyjamas as ‘original attire for the hours of deshabille’. (1)

In the early 1920’s, journalists redefined indoor pants as evening pajamas and interpreted them as feminine and even feminist. Martine Rénier’s editorial “What feminine fashion has taken from masculine fashion?” contended that women only adopted attractive elements of trousers and shirts and wore them only in-doors. Making ladies trousers of brightly colored silks and wearing them with tunics or blouses lamé or muslin represented a feminization of masculine-looking garments. Rénier also praised pants as practical, comfortable, and loose enough to allow free movement. (2)

By 1924, when Vogue announced ‘Pyjamas become matters of vivid importance’, it was time to put the cards on the table. ‘The pyjama is not an amusing novelty; it has become an essential part of the smart woman’s wardrobe’. Vogue pinpointed three variations: sleeping pyjamas – ‘a lovely boyish thing of washing silk or crepe de Chine’; lounging pyjamas – ‘when informal entertainments and masquerades are the order of the day’; and beach pyjamas – ‘usually of gay printed cretonne, often worn with bright rubber wristlets to keep the sleeves in place when one loiters on the sand’. (1)

Billie Dove

Sleeping pyjamas and lounging pyjamas were quite similar. These were very luxurious garments made of delicate and flowing fabrics such as silk, chiffon, satin or rayon. They feature loose, ankle-length pants that hung straight at the bottom or were drawn tight around the ankle by a ribbon or lacing. The waistlines of the pants had drawstrings. Tops were hip-length jackets with varying sleeve lengths.

Alice White modelling lounging pyjamas, 1920’s.

Women’s pyjamas sometimes were quite stylized, even whimsical. For instance, on occasion they were designed in silk in an Oriental fashion that featured loose, wide sleeves like kimonos. They were printed colourfully with renderings of Japanese and Chinese objects, such as paper lanterns, geisha houses, and chopsticks.

Louise Brooks

According to period fashion illustrations, beach pyjamas were similar in appearance to sleeping/lounge pyjamas. Soon they became a double-duty garment for the relaxed resort lifestyle, one that navigated easily from beach to cocktail party. I will talk about these garments in detail in the future, where I’ll dedicate a post to 1920’s Beachwear.

Schiaparelli fashions, 1929

(1) Vogue Fashion – Linda Watson, 2008
(2) Dressing Modern Frenchwomen: Marketing Haute Couture, 1919-1939 – Mary Lynn Stewart, 2008

Sources:

http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/fashion_costume_culture/Modern-World-1919-1929/Pajamas.html#ixzz3cHvecoCN

http://blog.fidmmuseum.org/museum/2010/04/lounge-pajamas-c-1935.html

1920’s Women’s Trousers

In the same way as the sportswear revolution was responsible for deconstructing corsets, fashion movements of the 1920’s were sparked by social situations. Trousers had come in through the back door. (1)

If it had become acceptable for modern Frenchwomen to wear pants for sports, French fashion magazines, and by inference their readers, did not considered tailored pants suitable for ladies to wear on city or in public. (2)

Trousers as we see them today, never really became part of the 1920’s women’s attire.

Not one article on wardrobes included city pants, and only a few articles on vacation attire included slacks of any kind. In the 1940’s, it was still unusual for stylish women to wear pants in cities. (2)

Although you can still find some exceptions in 1920’s pictures of brave women who adopted men’s trousers as their own. Mostly still, had been worn at sports related events or indoors.

Amelia Earhart, 1928

Washington, D.C. “Blizzard, January 28, 1922.”

(1) Vogue Fashion – Linda Watson, 2008
(2) Dressing Modern Frenchwomen: Marketing Haute Couture, 1919-1939 – Mary Lynn Stewart, 2008