"Flapper" dresses on display at Barry County Musuem
January 13, 2021
Sheila Harris
The “Roaring Twenties” were notorious for many changes in American culture, including a drastic reduction in the yardage used for women’s dresses.
“Women’s dresses got shorter in the 1920s,” Schrediah Mahurin, of the Barry County Museum, said.
According to one source, hemlines gradually rose until they reached knee-height by 1925. Not only did dresses shorten, but they also narrowed. Corsets and crinolines, staple undergarments of the Victorian fashion era, were ditched in favor of a natural, loose-fitting, yet body-hugging, look, with much the look and feel of a chemise, another Victorian undergarment: the one worn closest to the skin. The new dress fashions were adopted primarily by young women, many of whom also bobbed their hair, exercised their newly-won right to vote, took up smoking, driving and dancing the Charleston in clandestine urban speakeasies, where the sale of liquor was forbidden, but was sold to patrons nevertheless.
These women, who became known as “flappers,” created a cultural genre, an image of which can easily be called to mind 100 years later.
In commemoration of that era, the Barry County Museum is featuring a new display of 15 flapper dresses from the 1920s, donated by a museum patron who has collected them over the years. Adorned with jewels, sequins, embroidery and pin-tucks, the dresses are classic examples of those worn by female movie stars and attendees of speakeasies of the Roaring Twenties.
Schrediah Mahurin pointed out the knee high (or higher) slits on many of the dresses.
“Those weren’t just to raise eyebrows,” she said. “They allowed the wearers of the dresses to dance the Charleston and the Fox Trot with ease. Both dances required lots of leg movement.”
Historians speculate that the women’s suffrage movement, culminating in the ratification of 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919, which granted women the right to vote, contributed to their newfound sense of freedom.
Sheila Harris
The “Roaring Twenties” were notorious for many changes in American culture, including a drastic reduction in the yardage used for women’s dresses.
“Women’s dresses got shorter in the 1920s,” Schrediah Mahurin, of the Barry County Museum, said.
According to one source, hemlines gradually rose until they reached knee-height by 1925. Not only did dresses shorten, but they also narrowed. Corsets and crinolines, staple undergarments of the Victorian fashion era, were ditched in favor of a natural, loose-fitting, yet body-hugging, look, with much the look and feel of a chemise, another Victorian undergarment: the one worn closest to the skin. The new dress fashions were adopted primarily by young women, many of whom also bobbed their hair, exercised their newly-won right to vote, took up smoking, driving and dancing the Charleston in clandestine urban speakeasies, where the sale of liquor was forbidden, but was sold to patrons nevertheless.
These women, who became known as “flappers,” created a cultural genre, an image of which can easily be called to mind 100 years later.
In commemoration of that era, the Barry County Museum is featuring a new display of 15 flapper dresses from the 1920s, donated by a museum patron who has collected them over the years. Adorned with jewels, sequins, embroidery and pin-tucks, the dresses are classic examples of those worn by female movie stars and attendees of speakeasies of the Roaring Twenties.
Schrediah Mahurin pointed out the knee high (or higher) slits on many of the dresses.
“Those weren’t just to raise eyebrows,” she said. “They allowed the wearers of the dresses to dance the Charleston and the Fox Trot with ease. Both dances required lots of leg movement.”
Historians speculate that the women’s suffrage movement, culminating in the ratification of 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919, which granted women the right to vote, contributed to their newfound sense of freedom.
An exhibit of dresses from the "Roaring Twenties" are now on display at the Barry Countty Museum. Shown above are a few samples from the collection.
