時尚的歷史，1920s

Hello, my name is John Knight, and I run a lovely fashion shop called Vintage 2 Versace. Now, my passion, obviously, is fashion, and I love to talk about the history of fashion. And so I'm going to present to you the history of fashion through the 20th century. This is episode 2, the Roaring Twenties. We're moving now to the second decade of the 20th century. And it's one of the only two decades that has its own adjective. And the adjective is Roaring, Roaring Twenties. I can't emphasize enough the huge changes that occurred between 1910 and 1920. But I'll move into three areas. Firstly, of course, the Great War. The Great War started in 1914. And immediately, the government asked as many women as possible to help the war effort. That means coming into hospitals, into transport, into manufacturing, whether it be armaments or uniforms. They wanted as many women as possible. Now, women had been pushing for the vote prior to this. Because in the United Kingdom, only men had the vote. Women wanted the vote, and they did a trade-off. They said, yep, we'll help you. We'll move in and help the war effort. But we want the vote, please. And the government agreed to that. So in 1914, millions of women moved into war service. And in doing so, they changed fashion forever. Because, of course, they needed to cut their hair short for the machines that they were working on. They needed a uniform or a utilitarian dress that they could put on quickly and simply. Ladies' Maze disappeared because they joined the war effort. And so ladies found themselves with these magnificent old dresses that they couldn't put on themselves. So fashion changed immediately with the outbreak of war. That was one very major influence. The second major influence occurred after the war. And that was, quite simply, a shortage of men. So many hundreds and thousands of men were killed or wounded that women found themselves outnumbering men quite considerably. And what did they resort to? Attractiveness. The more attractive you were, the more likely you were to find one of these scarce men. And the third major influence came over to us with the American forces in 1917. It came on a ship, and it was called jazz music. Jazz and dance music changed the face of fashion forever. As soon as the young people, and remember, the soldiers and their girlfriends wanted something to relax to, to entertain them, they were dancing and shimmying away in a completely new costume. The advent of the 1920s saw the most daring dresses of the century. And I've got one or two to show you here. Let's have a look first at Elsa in a typical flapper dress. Flapper was the name given to a young girl before she became a debutante. And it was then universally taken over to mean all the young people, all the young girls of that decade. Here's a flapper dress, and you can see straight away it is amazingly different to the pre-1914 styles. Here we have frills in abundance. We have a short skirt. It covers modestly by extended frills at the bottom there. It is of a simple fall-away dress style. There's nothing structured in this whatsoever. It can be lifted off and put on or over the head in an instant. A very, very lively, a great dance dress. And if we can get Elsa to just shimmy a little bit, you can see how it moves. Fabulous. Complimented by strings of pearls. They were immensely popular with young ladies. A string of pearls and, of course, a felt soft cloche hat. Cloche hats were brought in in order to meet with the hairstyle. And remember what I said about cutting the hair short for the machinery? Well, Hollywood also had introduced short hair for their film stars. Louise Brooks had a famous bob cut, and it was copied all over the world. And what went with that cut? Well, these fabulous little cloche hats. So here's a felt cloche hat, a fabulous flapper dress set off with pearls, etc. Let's have a little look at the back. Wow, look at that. Absolutely dead knockout attractive. And at the same time, you can dance the night away, and you can come to any function in this wonderful flapper dress from about 1922. Thank you, Elsa. Now let me introduce Laura. And I want to show you Laura wearing a typical 1920s day dress. So this is a super light blue with a satin trim 1920s day dress. You can see that it's quite modest. It falls to the knee. It has a very slimming shape about it. There's no structure. It's a simple dress to put on and take off again. I like the way that the decal here moves around the dress. And I like the three-quarter sleeves. I think these were very, very simple additions to a dress like this that make it and lift it just above the normal. Pearls were worn by just about everybody, I think, in the 1920s. And you can see how they complement this dress very much indeed. One novel little feature is the extension from the front here of this strip that ends in a neat little bow here. Very interesting little addition. And I think it's a super dress all the way around. It's great for leisure. It's great for day use. And it's complemented by a cloche hat again. So the simple felt cloche hat to go with the bobbed hairstyle. Laura, you look absolutely marvelous in that. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for listening and looking at this episode of The History of Fashion. And this is just a reminder to let you know that we can bring this event with my models and our dresses and myself to tell the story at an event or an occasion or if you're an organization and you organize shows we'd be delighted to come and be your guest and do The History of Fashion for you. Thank you.