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Now that the ‘jeans and T shirts’ plague has reached our fancy restaurants, cocktail parties, and nightclubs, it seems as though noone except cares about dressing up anymore. You can find chic, ‘wellmade’ frocks, and afford them, as long as clothes are very tangible everyone wears them. It’s a perfect question for Jacqueline WayneGuite, a writer, researcher, and fashion archivist who’s worked with institutions across the and currently manages the garment collection at Columbia College Chicago.In 2012, WayneGuitealso launched her blog, The Hourglass Files, to catalog her favorite styles, designers, exhibitions, and similar forgotten tidbits of couturiers past.I really value accessibility, says WayneGuite, and making fashion history available to everyone. On the blog, it’s for the general public, in my job I get to share it with students. Consequently, more than a hundred years ago, you wouldn’t have had enough clothing to designate certain dresses for special occasions. Oftentimes with more ready made clothing, fashion production became easier and cheaper. On top of that, moving into the 1910s and ’20s, we started to see major upward mobility.

Middleclass women could consume, the economy was great.

So literal foundation of the garment is of much lower quality, not only are the rhinestones and fabrics cheaper today.

You can not see corsetry built into a dress anymore, unless you’re buying expensive formalwear. Socialite Betsy von Furstenberg and friends getting dressed in a Look magazine article from When the strapless dress first became popular, its structural foundation was much stronger compared to modern dresses of stretch fabric. Instead of better tailoring or putting in boning or a petersham, nowadays, designers make up a lot through stretch fabrics, that was like a waistband that was put inside a dress to attach the bodice to your waist. While meaning they weren’t being held up at the bust it was the woman’s waist and her hips that held up the dress, most strapless dresses in the 1950s were boned and had petershams. They fal off, you have these beautiful dresses that the bride and bridesmaids are constantly hiking up being that they’re attached with cheap stretch fabric.

Therefore in case you were wealthy enough to have a party dress, the party dress is definitely more casual now, and there’s a much wider various silhouettes and styles.Onehundred years ago, you didn’t own a huge variety.

People wouldn’t even know you wore really similar dress repeatedly, you didn’t have as many parties to go to. You weren’t will be photographed and have your pictures spread around.

Since it didn’t matter if you wore identical dress, most middleclass women should have had one good dress to wear for evening. Weddings, and similar formal occasions.You didn’t have dresses for different occasions. Left, Poiret’s famous lampshade dress circa Via the vam.ac.uk. That said, this all has a trickledown effect. Of course we have a robe in the Columbia collection that has Japanese ‘kimonostyle’ sleeves, Chinese style metallic embroidery, and colors that look Indian influenced.

She’s seeing those looks in magazines, and hereupon copying them herself.Styles from different Eastern countries were often melded into one garment. It’s not that the middleclass woman in America was buying Poiret. I am sure that the lampshade silhouette was pretty avantgarde. Some were less shapely and more ‘sacklike’, and after all others had a lampshade look with a hoop around the hip area. We had a ‘lampshade style’ dress, when I worked with the collection at North Dakota State University. They generally went just past the hip, or fell somewhere between the knee and hip, and flared out around the hoop. Dresses were these boxy, boyish shapes, and to our contemporary eye, that doesn’t look very chic. Now let me tell you something. In the 21st century, we look for to see a bit more of the body, and designers weren’t really showing much of it being that women didn’t need to look womanly.

They always have to slim them down being that the dresses were quite dumpy by today’s standards, when costume designers create garments for movies set in the ’20s.

Women were going places ‘unchaperoned’ and were just more physically mobile.

They’re climbing in and out of cars more, and so they need a shorter skirt to get in and out unescorted. There’s a gentleman or driver to they’ve been moving their whole bodies. Essentially, it was also the first times women were moving more than just their feet when they danced. Party dresses of the 1920s were made for movement, like the designs at left from the National Suit Cloak Co, with their dropped waists and unstructured tops. Now please pay attention. They literally used to soak the satin in metallic solution, that would add weight to the garment and give this thin silk satin a more luxurious drape and movement.When you soak fabric in metallic solution, it’s intending to deteriorate really quickly, plus they have been covering these extremely fragile fabrics with heavy beads.I’ve seen some that were just trimmed with beading.

They’re quite modest, They’re still party dresses. It’s funny as the fabrics for party dresses in the 1920s were typically really fine, thin silk chiffons, or weighted silk satins. Not lots of them exist anymore, at least the dresses that were ‘well worn’. They will fall apart. Now regarding the aforementioned fact… Publicity stills taken of Norma Shearer (left, in and Jean Harlow (right, in flaunt their sultry, ‘bias cut’ silk dresses. It hugs the body more closely since That changes the fit of a garment. It hugs your curves, since there’s more stretch on the bias. We go from the boxy, boyish shape of the ‘20s to a very womanly shape. That’s interesting. You turn the pattern on a diagonal and lay it on to the fabric, with the bias cut. Yes, that’s right! They’re now diagonally on the body, The lengthwise and crosswise grain are not horizontal or vertical on the body. You should take this seriously. Left, with that said, this 1930s advertisement shows the diagonal seams and limited ornamentation of popular ‘bias cut’ dresses.

Right, therefore this Vionnet gown shows how low cut backs contrasted with excessively low hemlines, even in the Depression era when extra fabric was a true luxury.

They really wanted to live it up, when people went to a party.

You will think they’d use less fabric, yet the bias cut actually uses more fabric, since we were in the Depression. Hollywood movies in the 1930s are all about escaping the troubles of the economy and everyday life. That said, it’s this culture of escapism. Therefore, in the course of the daytime, everyone had to be very utilitarian. You should take this seriously. Accordingly the French designer Madeleine Vionnet is the most credited with mastering the bias cut. Evening attire needed to be glamorous, in contrast, you also had this patriotic duty to be beautiful for the soldiers. You needed to wow the boys. Your party dress needed to be a showstopper.

It’s among the only periods that you see sleeves on dresses. For practical purposes, the things they have been rationing throughout the war was heat, by turning the temperature down to cut back on energy use, women needed sleeves. In spite the fact that it used far more material than a set in sleeve will, the dolman sleeve was very popular. Furthermore, it’s similar to a loose, ‘kimono style’ sleeve without seam between the bodice and the sleeve. Oftentimes for the most part, they’ve been cutting back on fabric, that definitely flouted the law. There’s excess fabric under the arm, it’s all one piece. Let me tell you something. New Look worked its way down to her, she was buying that ‘trickledown’ fashion, she was not buying Dior. That style dominated throughout the 1950s, especially for the ‘middle class’ woman in America. Essentially, it’s really the first time we see Middle America wearing these cute, strapless, promstyle dresses.

You definitely see them in the ’50s, mostly small florals, novelty prints got started in the 1940s.

It’s always small and feminine and pretty.

It wasn’t just one fabric and one color. Nonetheless, it should probably have some netting, lace, silk satin, or rayon on it, So in case the dress was one color. It’s not anything loud. Your party dress was probably a basic, A line shift dress that hung its weight from the upper body. It went straight from the shoulder to the hem, or had a ‘Aline’ effect, it didn’t necessarily hug the bust. We’re intending to focus on the youth of today. Now please pay attention. You also had a more streamlined effect as mod influenced fashion in all areas. You should take this seriously. Young women wanted to wear short skirts.

Actually the 1960s were like Heck no!

We’re tired of these used up, oldfashioned ideas.

It was the first time you had skirts above the knee. You had artists like Andy Warhol, and his muses were wearing very mod styles. Now please pay attention. Pop art of that period and the music people listened to were all converging and influencing fashion, and fashion was also influencing them. However, women wanted heavier, more bohemian embellishments on their dresses, instead of streamlined. By the end of the ’60s, mod was almost dead, and fashion had moved onto this very chunky embellishment, especially for party dresses.

1960s are interesting since you start to see a speeding up of trends.

They’re huge, and there’re plenty of them.

We recently had a ‘one shoulder’ dress from the ’80s donated to the Columbia collection, and the shoulder with a strap has these giant fabric flowers. Via metmuseum.org. Left, with that said, this Yves Saint Laurent ensemble from 1980 raised the bar for bold shoulder detailing. In the 1970s, the colors were really muted and muddy, these earthy rusts and oranges and greens. We turned to super bright and neon colors, in the ’80s, people wanted something fresh and different. Organization by decade is a great presentation of the fashions of the times. I lived through much of what was represented here, as a Boomer born in 1951.

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