Antique Flapper Dress, ca. 1925

flapper dress ca. 1925

My cousin just sent me this flapper dress that belonged to our grandmother. She wore it in about 1925 and kept it all her life. I remember seeing it in a drawer when I was a child, about fifty years ago. Actually she had two, a green one and this peach one, and I remember being shocked at how heavy they were. Each was laden with silver beads, millions of them. Some have become tarnished, but not all. The dress is short, which is why I date it to the middle of the Roaring Twenties. 

I’m planning to bring it with me next year when I do book signings for THE IMPERSONATOR. I think it will make a great show-and-tell, along with other items I’ve collected that relate to the mystery, such as vaudeville programs.  

Where Does the Word “Bootlegger” Come From?

The word first appeared in the 1850s in Maine and of course it refers to smuggling liquor. But this seemed odd to me because Prohibition didn’t start until almost 70 years later. That is, except in Maine, the first dry state, where it became illegal to manufacture or consume liquor in 1851. Because Maine shares a border with Canada, the law was easily flouted. Ordinary folks wanting to smuggle liquor into the country could hide a couple bottles in their pants legs in Canada and walk into the United States. 

(Don’t jump to any conclusions about that pattern on the floor–before Hitler took the swastika for his Nazi Party, it was a perfectly respectable symbol dating from ancient times that was often used to decorate mosaics, tiles, pottery, and other items. This photo pre-dates the Nazis.)

The Return of the Cloche Hat

The NY Times has reported several times in the past few months on the fashion trend toward cloche hats. Today another article appeared, so I thought I’d share it.

Come Hither, Sighed Her Hat

As “The Artist,” the black-and-white silent film set in late 1920s Hollywood, gathers Oscar chatter, the Jazz Age fashion of that time is having a moment in real time. Cloche hats, the toppers the ingénue Peppy Miller (charmingly played by Bérénice Bejo) wears on her rise to stardom, were all over Ralph Lauren’s romantic spring runway as well as at Marc Jacobs. “There’s a mystery to the cloche,” said Mark Bridges, the costume designer of “The Artist.” “They sort of half hide the face and are coy.” Bridges used period styles to frame Bejo’s face, but these cloches are available now — for warmth and a little hat flirting.

For example, here’s Ralph Lauren’s latest, obviously inspired by the fashions of the Roaring Twenties. 

A Genuine Roaring Twenties Dress

I was going through an old trunk with my mother last month. She had forgotten what was in it, but she remembered as soon as I pulled out the various articles of clothing. A dress that had been worn by her grandmother around the turn of the twentieth century, two fancy shawls from the same era, a couple dresses her mother had worn in the Forties, and so forth. She didn’t want them. I didn’t want them. So I took the lot to a local vintage clothing store where the owner was ecstatic to have the opportunity to buy such clothing in relatively good condition. (“This is why I went into this business,” she said happily.)

At the last minute, I held one dress back. The vintage clothing store owner confirmed what my mother had said, that this was a day dress from the Twenties. It is a simple dress, cotton, straight waisted. I washed and ironed it, and if the occasion arises, I plan to wear it. Maybe my Roaring Twenties mystery series will get published, and I’ll need to appear at some book signing or conference and can wear something that not only dates from the era, but was owned by someone in my family. Here it is. Look at the cutwork lace. Really lovely work, and it’s “just” a day dress for casual wear!

The Big Secret: Mary Pickford’s Fake Curls

The famous curls of silent screen megastar Mary Pickford were real–at least, most of them. The big secret? She also had 18 false curls that she could add to her own when hers got limp or she needed more volume. They were made of real hair and she paid $50 a piece for them–about $200-300 in today’s money, depending on the year she purchased them. 

Early in her career, Mary Pickford told her fans (honestly) that her hair was light brown, and that it had been blond as a child. But in the black and white films of the 1910s and 1920s, it photographed lighter and she was usually described as a blond. Often she was backlit, giving her a golden halo effect. At last she succumbed to her reputation and dyed her hair with peroxide to make it more blond. 

Her fans were horrified when she finally bobbed her hair in 1928. It made front page news all over the country, and of course, a feature in Photoplay:

 

Men’s Hair: Parted and Oiled

When it comes to Twenties hairstyles, all the attention goes to the women with their bobs and waves. But men had a distinctive hairstyle too, one with a slicked-back look that few would appreciate today. 

Many men wore their hair short, often parted (right or left, either side would do), longer on top than on the sides, and brushed back from the face. They kept it in place with lots of brilliantine or other perfumed oil.  

Film stars popularized the look. Here’s Rudolph Valentino, the heart-throb of millions. Another example (left) shows young Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who got his start in pictures at 14 because of his father’s fame. 

The Vacuum Toaster Hair Dryer

When I’m writing about the Twenties, my fictional women can dry their bobbed hair at home with a vacuum cleaner. Or a toaster.

While the very first electric hair dryer seems to have been invented by a French hairdresser in the 1890s, it was a heavy, stationary piece of machinery that he used in his salon, not something available to women in their homes. The first time most women had access to a hair dryer was in the Twenties when some nameless person figured out how to rejigger the vacuum cleaner into a hair dryer. By modifying the vacuum with an attachment or making one yourself, you could have your own hair dryer. Vacuum cleaners, by the way, were just beginning to be popular with middle-class women at this time. Articles like the one below from 1933 told how you could make your own attachment and get double duty from your vacuum.

An issue of Popular Mechanics Handbook for Women from 1924 instructs you on how to make a hair dryer from a vacuum cleans and an electric toaster.

Clara Bow Shows How To Use Makeup

How did women use makeup in the Roaring Twenties? Let’s let Clara Bow, the silent film star known as the “It Girl,” show us.

First, many women, if not most, didn’t use any makeup at all. Those who did were usually younger women, sometimes termed “flappers” for their modern ways. Clara Bow was their model and one of the most copied women of her time. 

Bright red lipstick turned an ordinary mouth into a small, pretty pout, with a bow outline on the top lip. (Clara Bow was certainly playing on her name with that look!)

Eyebrows were plucked thin and arched or sometimes plucked completely and drawn on with pencil. Eyes were dramatically dark, with eyeliner all around the eye and thick curled lashes heavily brushed with mascara. In this picture,  you can really see her eyebrows clearly.

Rouge wasn’t that prominent. It was more of an eyes-and-mouth look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Makeup in the Twenties

During the decades prior to the Roaring Twenties, makeup was associated with actresses and prostitutes – professions many people considered identical. No self-respecting woman would wear makeup. The more daring might have cautiously applied a small amount that wouldn’t be noticed. Which rather defeats the purpose, don’t you think?

Ever heard of Maximilian Faktorowicz, the makeup artist who immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1904? Yes, you have. Like so many immigrants, simplified his name on arrival. He became Max Factor. Factor had worked with European ballet troupes and stage actors, but when film studios began moving to Hollywood in the 1910s, he gambled on moving to California to work with film actors. 

This was not as easy as it sounds, because traditional stage make up (grease paint) was too heavy to be used by motion picture actors. He had to invent his own products—at first, creams and powders—that would work for the film industry. His clients included most of the leading actresses and actors of the silent film era and early talkies, including Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Mary Pickford, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Norma Shearer, and Joan Crawford. He opened his own beauty salon in Hollywood.

Not until 1927 did Max Factor begin to market his products nationally. By then, the prejudice against makeup was softening, thanks to silent screen pioneers like Mary Pickford and Clara Bow who were seen as respectable women. People credit Factor with coining the word “makeup” (which replaced the more formal “cosmetics”), but that word had been around since 1821, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. I think it would be more accurate to say that he brought the word makeup into widespread usage.

I mention Max Factor briefly in my novel, so had to research his life and products, but found him to be a remarkable person.

Bobbie Pins — Who Knew?

Imagine a young woman today cutting her hair two inches long, dying it purple and green, and wearing it spiked straight up. Imagine the looks she would get in most parts of the country. Women in the Twenties who bobbed their hair could expect similar reactions, but the hostility and moral implications made it far more shocking. Long hair had been a woman’s “crowing glory” for centuries, and the idea was tied into virtue and respectability. Before the Twenties, many women lived their entire lives without cutting their hair. Everyone wore their hair loose and long (or in braids) as girls, then pinned up in various styles as women. But short? Never. 

So when the first few young women started cutting off their long tresses in during the Great War (1914-1918), it shocked people silly. The “bob,” a blunt cut level with the ear lobes, with or without bangs, became a statement of youth throwing off the moral restrictions of society. It was closely tied to the wearing of short skirts, going around with men unchaperoned, smoking cigarettes, drinking cocktails, dancing lewd dances like the Charleston, and general immorality. Preachers preached against it. Women who worked with the public, such as teachers, department store workers, and office girls, were fired for coming to work bobbed hair. Romances broke up.

When French designer Coco Chanel bobbed her hair in 1916 and several Hollywood stars, like Clara Bow, followed suit in the 1920s, the daring image spread. The furor over bobbed heads didn’t fade until about 1927. The style is still popular today.

What I found most interesting in all this was the introduction of the lowly bobbie pin. Yes, it should have been obvious, with a name like that, but it wasn’t . . . at least, not to me.