It was the decade of the roaring 20s and the jazz age, with fashion apparel and accessories that included cloche hats; Art Deco evening dresses, high heeled footwear, bobbed hairstyles, exclusive casual clothes for women (leisure wear and sportswear).
In the twenties, fashion was finally becoming more relaxed with looser fitting clothes and defined by the camisole and chemise as undergarments, underwear that replaced the confining and tight fitting corsets.
Top Fashion Designers Of The Era Include:
1)Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel
Coco Chanel was and still remains one of the biggest names in the fashion and beauty industry.
Coco soon became a famed fashion designer as she revolutionised the way women wore clothes, paving a new way for the fashion brand, she, being a fashion icon herself. Her simple but elegant styles changed the course of fashion history.
Some Of Her Popular Styles Include:
Trousers for women — Her choice to wear sailor’s pants made the style spread so quickly, with her die-hard fans emulating her almost instantly.
Little black dress (LBD) — Most women associate the little black dress with Audrey Hepburn because she wore it in the famous movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. However, it was first designed by Coco Chanel in 1926. A calf-length simple black sheath, it was labelled “a frock that all the world would wear”. The style has become a wardrobe essential for every woman ever since.
Suits for women — She created iconic suits for women, being inspired by menswear; specifically men’s suits. Jackets were collar-less with fitted sleeves, embellished buttons, and were cut stylishly boxy with an accompanying skirt that was slim-cut and trim.
2)Elsa Schiaparelli
She was an Italian Designer regarded as one of the most prominent figures in the fashion scene between both World Wars, Schiaparelli’s creations were influenced by surrealists like Salvador Dalí (a skilled draftsman and prominent Spanish painter), and Jean Cocteau (a French writer, filmmaker, designer, artist, and playwright).
The designer’s famed fashion styles include:
The wrap dress — Inspired by aprons, the design of the wrap dress was made to flatter the female silhouette. Originally conceived as women’s beachwear, the dress was popular as a design for everyday easy-to-wear clothing.
Clothing with visible zippers — Zippers (zips) was a key feature of her fashion designs. They were made of some form of plastic, bold and chunky, visibly clasping dress necklines and running down sleeves, dresses, and even skirts. She designed wardrobes for a good number of movie stars including Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mae West.
3)Jeanne Lanvin
Born in Paris in 1867, Jeanne Lanvin who founded the Lanvin brand was a French Haute Couture fashion designer who was not only into fashion designing but also founded Lanvin Parfums, a beauty company and perfumery. She is known to be the founder of the world’s oldest fashion house.
She started on the fashion scene by being a milliner (hat maker) but soon became a fashion designer and couturier.
Jeanne Lanvin designed wonderful clothing for her daughter Marguerite, something that inspired her on and was the actual driving force behind her design creations. The beautiful designs of the dresses she made for her daughter was so admired by women, there grew a demand for adult versions of such exquisite clothing. Lanvin soon after created clothing lines also known as mother-and-daughter outfits
Her famous designs include:
- Empire-waist chemise dresses
- Robe de Style — Bouffant style clothing for larger women (a design that became her signature piece)
4)Paul Poiret
Probably the most fashion conscious of the early 20th Century fashion designers, Paul Poiret was particularly noted for his neoclassic and ‘oriental-ish’ creations with clothing designs that are cut along straight lines and rectangular motifs. The structured cuts represented a beginning of modern fashion.
He was actually more popular in the first decade of the 1900s than he was in the 1920s when his popularity started to wane.
Poiret’s flamboyant designs which generally came in in brilliant colours — shades of red, blue, green, purple, and blue include:
- Lampshade tunics
- Hobble skirts
- Harem pants
- Turbans
- Draped evening gowns
- The empire style
Poiret was particularly noted for reviving the empire style and advocating the replacement of corsets with the ‘modern’ bra. His clothing still features prominently in the collections of fashion museums worldwide.
5)Jean Patou
Patou was a perfumer, a debauchee, and fashion designer. He is recognised as the one who invented the “designer tie” in the 1920s and his famous cubist cardigans with matching hats, scarves and gloves. These two creations were some of the most popular trends of the 1920s.
The designer tie is simply men ties made in the same fabric as the women’s dress collection. The style is still prominent among modern fashion designers like Timmy Everest (a bespoke tailor and designer from Wales), Paul Smith (a famous British fashion designer), and Louis Féraud (a French artist and fashion designer).
He was the innovator of ready-to-wear clothing which marked a new direction in 1920s couture and the concept of off-the-rack designer wear that we know today. His other creations include:
- Knitted swimwear
- Sportswear — In comfortable yet stylish designs that personified the fashionable “new woman” . . . those who wanted to look stylishly sporty, even if they did not participate in any form of exercise.
- Tennis skirt — Below the knee and knee-length skirts. He, notably, designed the then-daring sleeveless and knee-length cut tennis wear for Suzanne Lenglen, a famous French tennis player who won 31 Championship titles between 1914 and 1926
- Cubist-inspired jumpers — An ultra modern motif that was also applied to matching skirts, bags, and bathing costumes.
- Bell-skirted, high-waist evening dresses — In 1929, he raised the waistline of the skirt and brought it back to its natural hemline, a style that Coco Chanel immediately followed)
In the mid-20s, Jean Patou started a perfume business which is still thriving and well-known even till this day.