Category
April 2011
The 1920s is the decade in which fashion entered the modern era. It was the decade in which women first liberated themselves from constricting fashions and began to wear more comfortable clothes. Men likewise abandoned overly formal clothes and began to wear sport clothes for the first time. The suits men wear today are still based, for the most part, on those men wore in the late 1920s. Their hats were somewhat rounded.
Women's Wear:
Clothing changed with women's changing roles in modern society, particularly with the idea of new fashion. Although society matrons of a certain age continued to wear conservative dresses, forward looking and younger women now made sportswear into the greatest change in post-war fashion. The tubular dresses of the 'teens had evolved into a similar silhouette that now sported shorter skirts with pleats, gathers, or slits to allow motion.
Men's Wear:
In menswear there were two distinct periods in the 1920s. Throughout the decade, men wore short suit jackets, the old long jackets being used merely for formal occasions. In the early twenties, men's fashion was characterized by extremely high waisted jackets, often worn with belts. Lapels on suit jackets were not very wide as they tended to be buttoned up high. Trousers were relatively narrow and straight and they were worn rather short so that a man's socks often showed. Trousers also began to be worn cuffed at the bottom at this time.
The American 1920s had many names: the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the Dry Decade, and the Flapper generation. Whatever the moniker, these years saw the birth of modern America. This volume shows the many colorful ways the decade altered America, its people, and its future.
Listening to radio was a new experience in the early 1920s. Radio stations were mushrooming across the United States in the 1920s. In March of 1922, the Atlanta Journal opened up WSB in Atlanta, the first radio station in the south. Six months later on September 9, Fiddlin' John Carson made his radio debut, one of the first country music performers to modulate the airwaves.
In 1922, 30 radio stations were in operation in the United States, and 100,000 consumer radios were sold. Just a year later, 556 stations were on the air and half-a-million receivers were sold.
Radio was on its way, and the commercial broadcast model would reign essentially unchallenged for eight decades until the advent of satellite radio and podcasts.