Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire
Great shot, sopas. (It must have been great for women to get rid of all that baggy clothing and live a little during the '20s. And again
in the '60s when they finally sluffed off the dowdy uptight girdled look of the Miltown '50s....)

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The 1920s witnessed some of the most rapid changes in U.S. history.
Except for those strange looking cloche hats that looked like helmets, women's clothing by the mid 1920s was essentially modern thanks to Coco Chanel. Hemlines reached a peak by 1928, just above the knee, and started to fall in 1929 about the time of the stock market crash. Hence the "hemline indicator" of market moves. Short hair on women ("bobbed") became common by the early1920s, and the norm by the late 1920s. Longer hair and longer hemlines on women returned in the 1930s, and essentially stayed that way until the late 1950s/early 1960s when they rose again. Hemlines didn't rise substatially above the late 1920s levels until the late 1960s during the mini-skirt era. The 1930s did see one major innovation in women's fashion--slacks. Women wearing pants was somewhat unusual in the '20s, but common by the mid '30s in leisure wear (but still uncommon in business attire). Pantsuits for women in a business setting didn't become common until the 1970s.
Men's clothing was also modern, except for detachable and starched collars still in vogue in business attire until the late 1920s. After 1927, men's collars became essentially modern and were usually sold as part of the shirt instead of being sold as detached from the shirt. Hats on men didn't begin to disappear until the 1960s, when JFK stopped wearing them.