Does a 20 year span seem like a long time to you?
I've always been fascinated by the GIANT leap that fashion took between
1900 and 1920. In less than two decades women went from wearing
Gibson Girl form-fitting clothes to the Roaring Twenties flapper dresses.
Hair styles also made some drastic changes in those twenty years.
These were the height of hair fashion in 1900:
Fashion Era
Can you imagine the number of hours it took to create one of these 'up dos'?
Now look at the short, casual 'bobs' of the 1920s:
Congress passed the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to
vote on August 18, 1920. What better way to show their freedom than
with a liberating 'bob'?
Maybe we shouldn't be surprised by the difference 20 years can make when
we look at the gap between 1949 and 1969.
Fashion went from this:
Source
to this:
And hair styles went from
this: to this:
It's hard to believe that the photo of model Jean Shrimpton, pictured right, is
almost 45 years old. Twenty years doesn't really seem so long now, does it?!
Fascinating post. I used to marvel at the changes my 100 year old aunt had seen in her lifetime ...
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother (b 1901 - d 1998) also saw so many changes. In her entire lifetime she never wore a pair of pants, always wore dresses well below her knees, and wore her hair up in a braided bun. I can only imagine what future generations will say about today's 'dress code' - Daisy Duke short shorts and low cut tshirts. Makes me want to revert back about 100 years! -- Jan
DeleteAn interesting and memory-prompting post. Jx
ReplyDeleteOh- I so remember Jean Shrimpton. 45 years? Unbelievable!!! She was gorgeous, wasn't she? I was the first one in our whole area to wear a mini-dress. I worked for a factory that made dresses for fashion shows in NYC. I got one of the first ones off the line...navy blue with white banding. lol Oh-the memories! xo Diana
ReplyDeleteDiana, I figured you for a radical chic! haha Although our dresses were short, they were stylish and oh, so cute, weren't they? Colleen Colby was my favorite 60s and 70s model - she was so wholesome and not ridiculously skinny like Twiggy. The British Invasion definitely rocked our fashion world. -- Jan
DeleteMy mother was born in 1908, so she saw many of these changes until her passing in 1983.
ReplyDeleteI still have a couple of mini-dresses in my closet. Perhaps there will be a reason to wear them again in the future.:-)
What was silly was that we couldn't wear blue jeans to school until my senior year of h.s. but we could wear short(ish) dresses. Every time we went to visit my grandparents I wore the longest 'short' dress I had! They didn't approve of the fashions of the late 60s.
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