Fashion Purses Blog

The 1930 saw a new decade and era in women’s fashion. There was a return to a more ladylike look with rounded busts and curvy wastlines. The hairstyles became softer, more flowing and without the usual perms that were seen in prior times. The big hats that covered the head completely and hid the forehead were a thing of the past in the 1930′s and were replaced by smaller more top of head type of hats that were plate shaped. The fashions were more feminine and glamorous, in fact the 30′s were the age of glamour with gorgeous and pristine evening wear along with neat and shapely daywear.

Probably the most characteristic North American style tendency from the 1930s to the end of World War II was concentration at the shoulder, with butterfly sleeves and banjo sleeves, and overstated shoulder pads for women and men by the 1940s. By 1933, the trend toward wide shoulders and narrow waists had eclipsed the emphasis on the hips of the later 1920s. Wide shoulders would remain a staple of fashion until after the war. The stage also found the 1st popular use of man- made fibers, particularly rayon for dresses and viscose for linings and lingerie, and artificial nylon stockings.

Suntans suddenly saw big popularity in the early 1930s, in addition to travel towards vacation places in the Mediterranean, in the Bahamas, as well as on the east coast of Florida in which an individual might get a tan, leading to new different types of garments: white dinner jackets for males and beach jammies, halter tops, and bare midriffs for ladies.

The Simple and Elegant Daywear vs. The Evening Glamour Look of the 1930′s

Before the 1930s affluent ladies hadn’t actually required to put on functional day garments. Even though styles were specified day types as long as they were impractical it hadn’t actually mattered as long as maids took care of household tasks. Then ladies had more productive and busier lives and simpler pared down clothes offered a liberty of movement ladies relished in daily life. Much more plush dresses used to be retained for evening. Brand new fabrics like metallic lame were extremely popular in the evening and had been made to shimmer all the more richly with the addition of plastic sequins and glass beads. (images: www.vintagefashionguide.com)

The Skirts of the 30′s

Skirts used to be commonly longer at the back than the front. Beneath the knee pleats and godets fell from panels therefore afforded fullness at the hemline. The hemlines got to the bottom of the calf within a year. A few of the garments were so stylish that they may just be worn today. A natural part of their attractiveness was the draping fabric that was further improved by cutting fabrics on the true cross or the bias grain also quite stylish in the beginning of the new millennium.

Jean Patou, the designer who had originally been the first to raise hemlines to 18″ off the floor with his “flapper” dresses of 1924, had once again lowered them t in 1927 by the using Vionnet’s handkerchief hemline to hide this change. By 1930, longer skirts and more natural waists were popular on clothing all over the place.

Designers such as Britain’s Norman Hartnell made soft, pretty dresses with fluttering or puffy sleeves and flowing calf-lengthed skirts that outlined and complimented a feminine figure. (image credit: sweetsassafras.org)

The 1930′s Dresses

Feminine curves were very much the focus of 1930′s fashion with the use of the bias-cut in dresses. Madeline Vionnet was the main inventor of the bias-cut and she used this method to create sculpted dresses that molded and shaped the ladie’s body. The 1930′s fashion certainly had a bias toward the thin and hourglass shaped female that is for sure.

Dresses cut with fitted midriffs or seams below the bust were used and influenced the focus on breadth at the shoulder. By late  190’30s the style was moving to the back area of the body with the use of halter necklines and high-necked but backless evening gowns. Evening gowns and dresses that had matching jackets were worn to the night clubs, the  theatre, nightclubs, and gourmet and elegant restaurants. (image credit: andoverhistorical.org)

1930′s The Invention of the Zipper

The Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli 1890- 1973 possessed an appreciation of rich fabrics and feminine fantasy clothes. It is Schiaparelli who is credited with “changing the outline of fashion from soft to hard, from vague to definite.” She introduced the zipper, synthetic fabrics, simple and chic suits with vibrant color accents, tailored evening gowns that had  matching jackets, wide shoulders, and she introduced the shock of the color pink to fashion!

photo credit: Cameron Cassan

Schiaparelli and Chanel were big rivals in the 1930′s and both were trying to become the top designers of fashion as well as perfume. In fact for a while the battle of Schiaparelli’s Shocking perfume versus Chanel’s perfume Chanel No 5 was raging.

Schiaparelli was a lover of ground breaking fashion and modern ideas. In 1933 she promoted the clasp we call the zip or zipper. The metal zip was invented in 1893 and by 1917 it had been fairly timidly utilized for shoes, tobacco pouches and U. S. Navy windcheater outdoor jackets. Her use of the new plastic coloured zip in fashion clothing was both ornamental, useful and extremely fresh. They quickly became universally utilized and have become an extremely dependable type of fastening.

Hats in the 1930s

The broad brim and also the high crown were lost to nearly a generation, but, from around 1934 milliners looked to Europe for inspiration. Hats in a a great deal wider great diversity of styles than were spied for well over ten years, were finally back again in style. (image credit: polyvore.com)

The Pert

Perky hats with an Austrian or Cossack feel possessed an outdoor sporty appeal. In 1935 high crowned hats used to be tilted at a jaunty angle and possessed a flirtatious quality. They were small and pert as well as were contrasted with broader sailor style hats. Among the biggest styles of hat that reflect that era is Florentine hat.

Designers vied in order to make shock value hats and Schiaparelli made an array of surreal zany hats that incorporated the lamb chop/cutlet hat, the shoe hat and fruit basket hats.

The 1930′s Hair Snood

Schiaparelli also presented a Victorian revival in the type of the contemporary snood in 1935. The snood grew to become a keystone way of maintaining excess hair free of equipment in wartime Britain. As the snood was crocheted it had been additionally simple to replicate and knitting and crochet and tatting designs came out in magazines all over the place.

At the same time in Hollywood Victorian themed movies with luxurious costumes such as Gone with the Wind stimulated an entire variety of fresh hat variations for the 1930s.

Other 1930′s Fashion Trends

Additional well known fashion tendencies with this period consist of the development of the ensemble, like matching dresses or skirts and coats as well as the handkerchief skirt, that had numerous panels, insets, pleats or gathers. The clutch coat was stylish in this period too; it had to be held shut as it had no fastening.

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