Evening dress designed by les Callot Soeurs, 1925-26
One can't help but be impressed by the transparency of the dress, apart from the applique design. Does anyone know whether/what kind of an undergarment would have been worn with this?
Found at Hats and Laces, which is well worth browsing for those interested in the history of clothing.
It reminds me of Boardwalk Empire, set in 1920. One of the characters wears something similar to an election night gala.
ReplyDeleteAs for undergarments, my grandmother was obsessed with costume so I have a vague idea of various period elements. My assumption would be a minimizing brassiere (really one of only two kinds they had at the time) and loose-fitting slip in a coordinating color. That's just my impression. A wrap of some sort or a long, loose shrug would also help counteract the transparency.
I've also seen pictures from that era showing women wearing a chemise, sort of like a tube with spaghetti straps, under this sort of dress.
ReplyDeleteI remember hearing someone make a comment that often, the ladies did without the undergarments. Many of the wild party-goers during the roaring twenties often preferred the risque look as opposed to a modest one. The applique on such designs was done in such a way as to barely cover those bits that might cause a scandal.
ReplyDeletePeople tend to look to the Sixties as when women through off the mantel of oppressive morays about clothing. But the young ladies of the Twenties were just as rebellious, if not more so, as they were rebelling against the Victorian sensibilities of their parents and grandparents. Also, women had just finally gained the Right to Vote as a Constitutional Right, and they were looking to gain social liberations as well, at the time.
What stopped that movement was the Great Depression. Social upheaval took a back seat to survival, and it wasn't until the next generation 30 years later that the fight was once again taken up by the granddaughters of the flapper girls.
There would have been a matching slip in a color called tea rose -- a sort of flesh color -- that would have come with the dress.
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