FReeper Canteen~Fads~24 May 2007

The FReeper Canteen Presents

Fads of the 1920's

Bright Red Lipstick
During the roaring twenties women used to wear bright red lipstick. A very vibrant red was in style.

Swing Dancing
A popular type of dance that almost everyone was doing.
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Peter Pan Peanut butter
Peter Pan Peanut Butter was introduced in the 20's and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a popular food item.
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Radio Shows
Families used to gather around the radio to listen to such shows as Abbott & Costello, Amos & Andy, and Death Valley Days. We call it Old Time Radio now but back then it was new. The fad quickly fadded after the television was invented.
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Dance Marathons
People loved to dance, especially the Charleston, Fox trot, and the shimmy. Dance marathons were something everyone went to every weekend. The longest dance record ever recorded was a record of 3 weeks of dancing.
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Pez
- In 1927, Eduard Haas, an Austrian candy executive, developed a small candy mint which he called PEZ (short for pfefferminz, the German word for peppermint). The peppermint candies were stored in a small tin and sold fairly well for more than 20 years. Initially it was marketed as a tasty alternative to cigarettes for adults attempting to quit smoking.

In an effort to boost sales and develop a brand identity for the PEZ mints, the first pez dispensers were introduced in 1948. The original dispensers did not have the trademark heads, which were introduced four years later. These dispensers had cartoon heads and became very popular with children who traded them back and forth. These early dispensers are now very much in demand and are valued treasures among collectors.

More than 3 billion PEZ candies are consumed each year and is sold in more than 60 countries around the world but the candies have become almost a secondary item serving as an accessory for the dispensers of which more than 300 have been issued.
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Cloche hat
(deriving its name from the French word for "bell") became a necessity for daytime wear. The small hat fit snuggly over short hair and almost reached to the eyebrows. It was often decorated with a pin in the front or a ribbon.

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Mahjongg
China conquered the United States as millions of Americans took to the mahjongg tables to Pong and Chow their way to, well, a really big fad.
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Freudianism
America took psychoanalysis to the next level with games of personalities and ridiculous theories based on those of Sigmund Freud.
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Flappers
They smoked, drank, danced, and voted. Flappers broke away conservative image of womanhood that prevailed at the time. They wore short hair, wore less clothing so they could move freely, used make-up, and created the concept of dating. They were giddy, unconventional, and took risks. In 1929, the stock market crashed, the great depression started. and the frivolity and recklessness of flappers came to an end.
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Conk hairdo
Originated in the 1920's and was popularized by Cab Calloway. Started by the African American males trying to straighten their hair, the conk was the end result.

Flagpole Sitting
Started by Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly who was a professional stuntman. He did it on a dare in 1924, and it soon caught on nationwide. It became a spectator sport, and he eventually set the World Record at 49 days with a crowd of 20,000 people watching. When the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression started, it brought an end to this fad

Timeline of the 1920's

1920 - November 2: First Radio broadcast; President Warren Harding elected; women get their first vote

1921 - September 8: First Miss America pageant held in Atlantic City; November 11: Unknown soldier of World War I buried

1922 - November 26: Archaeologist Howard Carter finds tomb of Tutankhamen near Luxor, Egypt

1923 - August 2: President Harding dies; August 3: Vice President Calvin Coolidge is sworn into office as president

1924 - February 3: Former President Woodrow Wilson dies; November 4: Calvin Coolidge is elected President

1925 - October 2: Scottish inventor John Baird invents the first form of a television

1927 - First talking movie, The Jazz Singer released; May 20: Spirit of St. Louis and pilot Charles Lindbergh land in Paris

1928 - September 19: First Mickey Mouse talking film, Steamboat Willie, released by Walt Disney; November 6: Herbert Hoover elected President

1929 - October 24: Start of the Stock Market Crash

The Invention of Modern American Culture

And the Fashion That Followed It Various social trends were at work during the 1920s. Historians have characterized the decade as a time of frivolity, abundance and happy-go-lucky attitudes. In 1920, women got the right to vote, and a year earlier, alcohol had become illegal. World War I had just ended. The 1920’s would mark the first youth revolution, long before the 1960’s.

Young people were very indignant after World War I, and felt the older generation had just murdered millions of young boys. So they stopped obeying conventional rules and invented their own liberated culture: driving their own cars, and drinking, and petting with people they weren’t married to. And, for the first time in history, older women started copying younger women. In the late 19th Century, younger women wanted to look like grownups. Now, for the first time, everyone wanted the thinness and relative bosomlessness of early adolescence. People felt free-spirited and wanted to have fun. As a result, fashions became less formal. The biggest phenomenom of the 1920’s was the worship of youth.

The feminine liberation movement had a strong effect on women’s fashions. Most importantly, the corset was discarded! For the first time in centuries, women’s legs were seen. Women wanted to be “smarty” and/or freewheeling. Talking about Freud and sex were signs of hipness. Young men, “the flaming youth,” wore raccoon coats and drove around in old used Model Ts. Black-influenced jazz music and dance styles (ie. the Charleston and the Black Bottom) captivated white youth to the dismay of their parents. The first integrated ballroom, the Savoy, In Harlem, gave birth to the Lindy Hop, where — together — blacks and whites danced the night away as equals.

Dating, as we know it today, was invented in the 1920s. Previously, boys had to be courting a girl, they had to be committed, and girls had to be engaged to them in order to go out with them. The unchaperoned date was something new. Dating permitted people to see each other, and discover each other without having to proclaime an intent to marry. When flappers and flaming youth got together, the results was explosive. Petting was a popular and well received pastime for the youth. It allowed a girl to have erotic interaction without endangering herself with an unwanted or out of wedlock child. Petting could mean kisses or fondling, but it stopped just short of intercourse, and while parents equated petting with fornication, teenagers did not, and their peer group would still accept them and respect them. Intimacy and eroticism was explored. “Petting Parties,” where eager, youthful hands explored the nether regions of the opposite sex, was standard college entertainment. “Billing and cooing” (that is, to “bill and coo”) was to whisper sweet nothings while “making whoopee.”

Clara Bow was the hottest jazz baby of the silent screen. She was born into poverty, and grew up in the Brooklyn slums. She was generous, and reckless, and able to shed a flood of tears on cue. She defined sexuality for an era that screamed for more of it. “It” was a catch all for sex, and Clara Bow became synonymous with the word. Known as the “It girl,” Clara brought it to you and served it on a platter, with no apologies and no excuses. Smoking, drinking, and petting parties were all part of her repertoire. She was one of the hottest box office stars of the silent film era. When “talkies” came around, however, this girl with a Brooklyn accent and high nervous voice lost her career, but her charm was not forgotten.

The flapper was the heroine of the Jazz Age. She was the culmination of all the trends of the 20’s. With short hair and a short skirt, rolled hose and powdered knees - the flapper must have seemed like a rebel to her mother (the gentle Gibson girl of an earlier generation). No longer confined to home and tradition, the typical flapper was a young women who was often thought of as a little fast and maybe even a little brazen. She defied conventions of acceptable feminine behavior. The flapper was “modern.” Traditionally, women’s hair had always been worn long. The flapper wore it short, or bobbed. She used make-up (which she might well apply in public). She wore baggy dresses which often exposed her arms as well as her legs from the knees down. Strings of pearls trail from her shoulder or are knotted at the neck and thrown over the right shoulder or under the arm. Silver bracelets are worn on her upper arm. Flappers did more than symbolize a revolution in fashion and mores — they embodied the modern spirit of the Jazz Age.

1920s fashion, though, was about so much more than fringed flapper dresses and feathered headbands, the cliche that many people associate with the era. As with every decade, the ‘20s had its fads as well as its classics, a few of which live on today. It was a romantic era for fashion, which is why people look back at this era with great fondness and still emulate its style. The era set the standard for the modern concept of beauty. The modern supermodel’s figure, is — itself — modeled after the 1920’s ideal of a woman’s figure (that of a thin pre-pubesent girl on the verge of puberty). The central phenomenom of the era was the worship of youth. For the first time in history, older women started copying younger women.

The pre-pubesent girl look became popular, including flattened breasts and hips, and bobbed hair. Fashions turn to the “little girl look” in “little girl frocks”: curled or shingled hair, saucer eyes, the turned-up nose, bee-stung mouth, and de-emphasized eyebrows, which emphasize facial beauty. Shirt dresses have huge Peter Pan collars or floppy bow ties and are worn with ankle-strap shoes with Cuban heels and an occasional buckle. Under wear is fashionable in both light colors and black, and is decorated with flowers and butterflies. With the cult of youth and the new spirit of equality come the camisole knickers; also fashionable is no underwear at all. Along with the rage for drastic slimming, women still strive to flatten their breasts and de-emphasize their hips. The cult of the tan begins; lotions to prevent burning and promote tanning appear on the market. Skin stains are also manufactured, as well as moisturizers, tonics, cream rouges, eye shadows, and more varied lipstick shades.

In the 1920s, a lot of clothing was still made at home or by tailors and dressmakers. The brand-name, ready-to-wear industry didn’t really exist until the 1930s, however some ready-made clothing was available from department stores and mail-order catalogs. Several magazines devoted to sewing were sources for patterns, transfers and appliques by mail. However, improved production methods enabled manufacturers to easily produce clothing affordable to working families. Because of this, the average person’s fashion sense became more sophisticated.

In 1923, the boyish bobbed hair transforms into the shingle cut, flat and close to the head, with a center or side part. A single curl at each ear is pulled forward onto the face. New felt cloche hats appear with little or no decoration in colors that match the day’s dress. Hats are pulled down to the eyes, and their brims are turned up in the front or back. In clothing, the straight line still emphasized the pre-pubesent look, but fabrics are now embroidered, striped, printed, and painted, influenced by Chinese, Russian, Japanese, and Egyptian art. Oriental fringed scarves, slave bangles, and long earrings were set off. Artificial silk stockings, later called rayon, are stronger and less expensive that real silk ones, although they are shiny. The new seamless stocking, despite its wrinkling, also makes the leg look naked. At bedtime, girls wear pajama bottoms, halter tops, and boudoir cape to protect their new hairdos.

By 1926, women were wearing skirts, shortest of the decade, stopping just below the knee with flouncing pleats; they are worn with horizontal-striped sweaters and long necklaces. Short and colorful evening dresses have elaborate embroidery, fringes, futuristic designs, beads, and appliques. The cocktail dress is born. The new sex appeal extends from the bee-stung mouth and tousled hair to a new focus on legs, with silk stocking rolled around garters at rouged knees. The “debutante slouch” emerges: hips thrown forward, as the woman grips a cigarette holder between her teeth. Mothers and daughters are flappers, many nearly nude beneath the new, lighter clothing.

Daywear
There were two important ethnic influences on the fabric and prints of the 1920s. One was a Chinese influence, with kimono-styling, embroidered silks, and the color red. The discovery of King Tut’s tomb brought a rash of Egyptian fashion and and accessories, including snake bracelets that encircled the upper arm. Small floral and geometric prints were prevalent throughout the decade, especially toward the latter half.

Evening Wear
Contrary to popular belief, women didn’t always wear fringed flapper dresses with feathered bandeaux and a long strand of beads. There were many other styles of evening dresses.

Evening clothes were made of luxurious fabrics — mostly silks — in velvets, taffetas and chiffon. In the mid-1920s, sleeveless silk chiffon dresses were were often embellished with elaborate beadwork. Dresses were designed to move while dancing. Some had long trailing sashes, trains or asymmetric hemlines. Typically, women did not wear hats for evening, but instead wore fancy combs, scarves and bandeaux.

The Twenties saw women voting, the Harlem Rennaisance, prohibition, and an incredible burst of affluence for the middle class. Automobiles and electric appliances made people’s lives easier and gave them more leisure time. The loosening of restrictions on women was one of the most significant legacies of the 1920s. The incredible, rapid change that struck the country is clearly illustrated by women’s fashion in this decade. Victorianism and the turn of the century Gibson Girl were out, and in her place was a saucy, booze-drinking, cigarette-smoking, knee-length-dress-wearing flapper. Youthful rebellion was certainly not unknown before the 1920s, but “flappers” and “flaming youth” struck at the very foundations of tradition and morality.

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