Roaring Twenties Flapper Fashions for Women

• By Tina-Boomerina
• Current Trends Fashion Trends
• 6 years ago

by Tina Boomerina (Christina Gregoire)

I don’t know if the current fashion trend started in Hollywood (with The Great Gatsby) or in the fashion industry, but 20’s flapper styles are hot. Of course, you’re probably not going to wear the trend from head to toe, but you can easily update your wardrobe with a few deco accessories, like cloche hats and vintage-style purses.

Or, you can adopt the sleek silhouette and the entire look if you have a boyish figure.

Why the Twenties Roared -  Caution: History Lesson!

The Age of Jazz and Craziness must have been a glorious time to be alive.

People who lived through that decade were filled with optimism, freedom, and a sense of reckless abandon. Why? It was a prosperous decade, and a whole lot of fabulous things suddenly became available to the masses:

• Cars
• Telephones
• Radios
• Motion Pictures

And, people were ready for something new. Romantic, but old-fashioned, Art Nouveau was replaced by sleek, structural Art Deco. And, trendy women threw away their restrictive corsets along with their large, heavy, flowery hats.

Young, adventurous women fled their small, boring towns in large numbers to seek excitement in the big cities... it was what they had daydreamed about for ages and ages after visiting movie houses to get a dose of non-reality every Saturday afternoon. And, they were able to live their dreams by becoming secretaries in companies that were booming during this period of unprecedented industrial growth. (Goodbye Kansas.)

Photo of Roaring Twenties Fashion

The main photo (above) shows what actual flappers wore. I took an old image and enhanced it so you could actually see the women’s outfits. And, as I was playing in Photoshop, I started wondering who these four women were.

The original image looks like it is from a newspaper because of the color and resolution (see Resources), so these are neither debutantes nor hookers... the newspaper would not have printed a photo of either group. And, the four women are not chorus girls or fashion models because they are different heights. Read more about designs and colors worn by flappers.

The background in the original image shows a fancy-dancy hotel or speakeasy, so my best guess is that this photo reveals four average, real-life flappers (a bit tipsy), who were leaving a private party (or going to the powder room) when some guy with a camera asked them to strike a pose.

Therefore, you are looking at an image of four Charleston-dancing, cigarette-smoking, fun-loving secretaries, who met at work after fleeing the drudgery of farm life back in Dullsville.

Straight, Boyish Silhouette

You probably already know this, but the standard, rebellious silhouette of the day was long and lean, with a dropped waistline, a high hemline, and a cloche hat (covering a girl's shortly bobbed hair).

What you may not know is that the flapper style was the beginning of fashion for the masses, because anyone could sew a shift, while earlier couture had to be put together by skilled seamstresses. So, flapper style is “street style.” And, that knowledge may give you a little more courage when deciding what details to incorporate into your everyday wardrobe.

What Real Flappers Wore

I had to figure out what these babes in the photo were wearing when I was “painting” them in Photoshop.

The colors are my own invention and I was just trying to make their outfits obvious, but you might get some ideas by knowing how these women of average means tarted up their looks to fit the trend. (continue to the next page by below or by clicking here)

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