What Does 1920's Style Look Like? (Women)

The ideal silhouette (body shape) for fashionable women in the early 1920s was long and straight. The bust was flattened, the natural waist ignored, and the belt lowered to the hip. The 1920s brassiere flattened the bust in order to create the boyish figure that was so fashionable at the time.

Short, silk evening dresses were decorated with fancy glass beads and imitation pearls. Embroidery designs and hanging girdles were inspired by ancient Egypt. The discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 had a big influence on fashion. Sport, dancing, the rise of the automobile, and American films also left their mark on fashionable clothes.
Loose-fitting trousers that some fashionable women wore in the 1920s were known as beach or lounging pyjamas. Women’s hair was ‘bobbed’ (cut very short) in a boyish style and brimless hats were worn.

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The following was taken from another website.

The top fashion trends of the 1920s influenced society in many ways.

For the first time a “look” was available to the masses. These trends were influenced by the rich, social “elite” who had money to burn and lived close to the fashion centers of the world. Urban centers like New York and Paris influenced fashion, and fashion became the calling card of beauty, “sophistication,” and affluence.

1920s Fashion Model and Sexual Icon: Muriel Finley

The Sexual Revolution of the 1920s
Fashion and beauty are inseparable from sex. Throughout history, how people dress reflects how they are seen in society.
The top fashion trends of the Victorian Age dressed women in bodices, crinolines and corsets. Accentuating a woman's breasts and ass while crushing the waist within a frame of “masculine” control as Joshua Zietz writes in Flapper. The corset, he continues, had a political proscriptive function which determined how they were seen and how they functioned in society. Obviously a woman could not do much physically while wrapped beneath a crinoline which lessened their ability to breath and physically crushed their internal organs. The 1920s, in contrast, with the loose fitting waist lines, short hemlines, and simple breathable fabrics, reflect an easing up of the male domination of the female look. It was at this point that women, en masse, began riding bicycles, exercising, playing sports along with the other behaviors women are known for in the 1920s. The top fashions reflect this quiet sexual revolution. Designers like Paul Poiret, the self-proclaimed, “King of Fashion,” was a Parisian of refined style and taste, though you'd never know it from his inflated sense of ego and self (o.k. maybe you would). Poiret lived and breathed fashion and with his elegant designs he set forth to change the way the “modern woman” was seen in society. It's said Poiret “waged war” on the corset because of the way it divided a woman's body into two halves.

Exotic Styles

Clara Bow: The "It" Girl of the 1920s

With Poiret's influence and the contributions of several other talented, but less well-known fashion designers, the top fashion styles documented a shift toward an exotic look that utilized luxurious fabrics and furs. Ermine and mink shalls, wraps, capes and coats, lined with satin became de rigueur. Large, puffy collars adorned short furred, wait-length coats during the second half of the 1920s. Luxury was in season. As accessories, an animal's tail, head, and often paws were often used as decorative elements on these coats. I remember a coat of my grandmother's that was constructed entirely from the bodies of about 30 minks, heads, tails, paws. . . the works. It was both appalling and intriguing. In the 1920s this look went out of fashion quickly, thankfully.

Short Hemlines
Another calling card of the top fashion styles of the 1920s were the rising hemlines of a woman’s dress that progressively got shorter and shorter as the decade went on. Finally reaching just above the knee in 1925 and staying there.