Freddie Felstead and Charlotte Ashworth dress as though the 1920s never ended, which is as good a reason as any to ask what people actually wore in the1920s. Here is why.
What changed
For a long time, women’s clothes had been built to contain. The First World War loosened things considerably, since nobody can drive an ambulance or work in a factory in whalebone. By the middle of the 1920s the whole outline had changed. Waists dropped to the hip, hemlines rose to the knee, and the shape went straight where it had once curved.
The flapper
The flapper is the figure everybody remembers. Her hair was bobbed. Her dress hung from the shoulders with no apparent interest in her waist. Her stockings were sometimes rolled below the knee, and her cloche hat sat so low on her brow that she had to tilt her head back to see out from under it. Long pearls, a beaded bag and a cigarette holder completed the look. Older relations took it badly.
The Parisians
The most influential designers were in Paris. Coco Chanel turned jersey into a fabric respectable for daywear, and gave the world the little black dress and costume jewellery worn without apology. Jeanne Lanvin was known for beaded and embroidered evening dresses and the romantic robe de style, for those who wanted their modernity with a fuller skirt. Madeleine Vionnet perfected the bias cut, in which the fabric is cut across the grain so that it drapes and clings. It looked wonderful and required the wearer to stand very still at parties.
Fashionable Londoners crossed the Channel to buy these clothes, or went home and asked their dressmakers to copy what they had seen.
Why it lasts
Fashion and the 1920s have never let go of each other. Dropped waists, beaded dresses and the cloche return every few years, and Art Deco shapes stay popular wherever people want something to look both modern and well made. As for menswear, Freddie wears a double-breasted suit every weekday and has yet to be told it is out of date.
Book 1, Freddie Felstead and the Whitmore Affair, publishes on 22 October. If you would like to receive the occasional short note on the series and its universe, the sign-up link is just here.
