Flapper Style of the Roaring 20's - Fashion of the Jazz Age

The most popular image of the Roaring 20's is the Flapper - a flighty party girl, fond of dancing and frivolity. Flapper style was the fashion choice of the young, and despite the iconic image, a relatively short lived phenomena.

In the early part of the 1920's, hemlines took on a new look. Uneven, scalloped, and handkerchief hems gave the illusion of being shorter than they actually were. The culture and clothing styles took a turn way from tradition, due in part, to World War I.

During World War I, women took on jobs at munitions plants, as drive, and in administrative occupations, filling in for the men who had gone off to war. They wore uniforms, trousers, and gained a new self respect, and moved away from the stereotyped gender roles of the past.

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World War I, the Flu Pandemic of 1918 and difficult recovery devastated culture and society. Old rules and traditions fell by the wayside and young people entered into a new philosophy of cynicism mixed with a jubilant devil-may-care attitude. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald referred to the youth culture as the Lost Generation.

But it was not until the middle o the 1020's that the Flapper style emerged. Changing cultural attitudes has ushered in a new fashionable silhouette for women. Gone was the restrictive corset of the past, along with the stiff tailoring, tiny waistline, and hour glass figure of the past. Shift dresses downplayed the traditional female figure. The fashion trend of the 1920's was a tubular look that flattened breasts and narrowed hips. Hair, cut short in bobs, appeared androgynous and almost masculine to the older generation.

Flappers took the fashion trend to the extreme with short skirts, sort hair, and flesh colored stockings that were rolled to just below the knee. They wore headbands decorated with feathers, beads, or embroidery to hold back their hair when they danced to the new syncopated jazz.

For a few short years, Flappers shocked the older generation and grabbed media attention.

Hemlines began to fall at the end of the 1020's. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the world wide Great Depression that followed returned women's fashions to more sedate designs and trended toward a simplicity that reflected the new economy.