1920s Shoes

1920s T bar shoes

Shoe design in the 1920s departed somewhat from the high button boots and jet embroidered slippers prevalent in previous decades As hemlines rose, shoes became more prominent and thus there was more to show off. Ankle straps with side buttons and  T-bars  were among the popular styles of the era. Heels were generally quite high. - 2 inch or 21 and 1/2 inch curved or block. Some shoe styles lent themselves to  decoration with sequins, clasps and diamantes, particularly for evening wear.

Toes tended to be gently pointed and arches high and beautifully shaped to flatter the foot, though towards the end of the decade more rounded toes and flatter heels were coming into vogue. Contrasting coloured heels, decorated with patterns or even rhinestones were also fashionable, as were satin pumps, decorated with clasps, beads and sequins. Popular colours of the period included bronze, black, silver, gold, navy, green and various pastels.

1920s brown "Semi-Oxford" Paragon shoe. Image from the Melbourne Museum website.

The three basic styles of pumps, ankle straps and T bars were closed toe  and were worn throughout the decade; it wasn't until the 1930s that open toed shoes made a mainstream appearance. For casual wear, women wore lower heeled Mary Janes, Oxford brogues or button up boots styles. Heel decorations were sometimes very elaborate, especially in the high fashion stratosphere of Paris - there's some wonderful sketch examples of 1920s exquisitely detailed heel work, revealed in a Parisian trade catalogue at rarefashionbooks, which you can view here.

The influence of 1920s shoe designers is still evident in many of the shoes of today - classic styles that remain eternally elegant, defying trends which come and go with the decades.

Early 20s criss-cross, 'Tango' shoes

The Eton Crop

Josephine Baker

Dark and Shiny

If you were a radical flapper in  the 1920s, you might have considered sporting an Eton crop, a very slick, short, dramatic haircut with a pasted down kiss curl on either side of the cheek.

Radical Eton Crop, worn by German photographer, Aenne Bierman

The Eton crop was considered a daring style as it was less feminine than the Marcel wave or conventional bob and very much a radical departure from the hairstyles of previous decades. It also exposed the ears and more of the head, so if your features were less than perfect there wasn't much left to soften them with, although it worked well with a cloche hat.

The Eton Crop looked great with boyish 20s fashions. Leatrice Joy circa 1920-22

Leatrice Joy

However, when it worked it was a sensational, highly stylized look, that required plenty of brilliantine and was worn to great effect by avant garde dancer Josephine Baker, darling of the trendy European  set and American silent film actress, Leatrice Joy.. 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop wore a kind of  softened, longer version of an Eton crop but her characteristic kiss curls are emblematic of the style.

"Eton cut' was a term coined by The Times in the UK, to draw a parallel between the boyish look of the radical flappers and the traditional hairstyle of public school boys.  The Eton cut reached it's zenith around 1927-'28 and then was swamped by the softer looks that would define hairstyles of the 30s.

Kiss curl queen, Betty Boop

Marcel Wave

The Marcel wave was a very popular hairstyle of the 1920s and worked particularly well on the new and fashionable bob hairstyle that was sweeping the world. Marcel waving was named after 19th century French hairdresser Francois Marcel, who had invented the process of creating undulating 'S' shaped waves with the hair. In the 1870s Marcel tried out his style successfully on various women, including a well known actress of the day - the word spread and the soft 'S' wave thereafter became associated with Francois Marcel and the name Marcel a generic term for the style.

An early photograph of actress Claudette Colbert sporting a stylish  Marcel wave

However, although the wavy style had been used pre-1920s on long hair using hot irons heated on a stove,  the invention of electric waving irons in the early 20s made it so much easier to achieve - the stove method could be perilous, with burns and over heating a frequent problem.  There was also a Marcel perming machine used in the 20s but it was expensive and the results variable. Although there were women who had their hair permed in the 20s, It wouldn't be until the next decade that the perming process became widespread and trustworthy.

It's not hard to see why Marcel waving would have been so popular in the 20s, enduring into the 30s, as it was a romantic style which emulated natural waves and softened the severity of short hair, framing the face in flattering, uplifting waves. Marcel waves meant a 20s woman could keep in step with the new radicalism in fashion yet still retain a very feminine look.

Hollywood too, went a long way toward popularizing the style, as many leading actresses had their hair professionally coiffed in the Marcel style and together with the dark eye-makeup and  thin, penciled eyebrows of the era, made a dramatic statement on screen. For a retro change of style, these days it's easy enough to get the look with a purpose designed curling iron.

Swing Dancing: Lindy Hop. Jitterbug, Jive

The Origins Of Swing

Swing dancing goes right back to the raging 1920s, where it developed alongside jazz music among the black communities in Harlem. The same vibrant communities who had invented the Cake Walk, the Black Bottom, the Charleston and the Lindy Hop. Swinging jazz bands could be heard pumping out music in large and boisterous nightclubs like the The Cotton Club and The Savoy in New York, which opened in 1926. it was the kind of music it was impossible to sit still through and swing dancing more or less organically grew from the throbbing sounds.

The 1920s were an exciting, experimental period in 20th century history and this was reflected in the music and dancing, which had a kind of infectious vibrancy, as well as a crazy optimism. The vibe was continued into the 1930s and new dances, which had their roots in the old, sprung up. Popular bandleader Cab Calloway introduced a new tune in 1934 called the Jitterbug, which in turn spawned a new dance by the same name. It was a six beat variant of the Lindy Hop and required a serious amount of energy and chutzpah.

• African Influences on Swing Dance

The Harvest Moon Ball

Along with Calloway, Swing dance was brought into the mainstream by high profile hot jazz band leaders like Benny Goodman and Count Basie and later, Glen Miller..though there were critics at the time who complained that Miller's version of swing was too slick and controlled, thus moving it away from its wilder jazz roots toward a softer, more commercial version.

In 1938 the famous Harvest Moon Ball at the Madison Square Gardens in New York, incorporated Lindy Hop and Jitterbug dance competitions into its program.
By the 1940's swing had reached its zenith an the dances were everywhere...in the movies, in the streets, homes, dance halls and nightclubs . The terms Lindy Hop, Shag, Lindy, Jive, Jitterbug and Swing were used interchangeably in popular culture to describe the same type of spirited dance and eventually it all the dances came under the general banner of 'swing', although there are distinct differences between the individual dance styles.

 

Hellzapoppin'

The video below, from the 1941 film Hellzapoppin' is a little bit old and crackly and the first part is music only, but stick with it and you'll be rewarded, as it contains one of the most 'out there' dance sequences I've ever seen - it exemplifies everything swing is about - joie de vivre, phenomenal energy, and complete freedom of expression. There's nothing uptight about these dudes...

Swing Times

By the time the middle of the century rolled around, swing was being taught in most commercial dance studios, though often in a watered down and less rambunctious form, to accommodate a less nimble and sure-footed general public.

The swing that had developed through the decades had required a fair amount of skill and energy. One high profile swing enthusiast of the 1930's..Frankie Manning, had introduced the first aerial into the Lindy Hop. He and his partner had developed a back flip that he had seen performed by professional dancer and incorporated into the dance.

Frankie Manning and partner

Manning was an innovative dancer and made a name for himself at the Savoy Ballroom , where he and his partners did much to advance the swing cause and in particular the Lindy Hop. When the swing revival hit in the 1980s, Frank Manning once again proved to be an International driving force for the dance, through his performance, choreography and teaching.

Much of the swing dancing seen in vintage film clips from the era reveal the kind of expertise required to perform these dance numbers, which are in perfect sync with the music. They make it look spontaneous and easy, but of course, it wasn't. That kind of aerial flipping swing was not usually danced socially..rather, it required a high level of skill and practice and was performed professionally or for dance contests.

Still Popular

"Swing is so much more than a dance, it's a way of life. The music gets stuck in your mind and the dance is in your heart and the whole scene is engraved on your soul. You can fly."
Nicholas Hope

Swing dancing still has pockets of fans all over the world, is danced on the ballroom dancing circuit and every now and then there's an enthusiastic revival. It's s an exhilarating and social form of dance and a great way to keep fit. Many places hold regular dances and competitions, often with DJ's and live swing bands.

Swing dance resource page: Hefty Resource

Vita Sackville West

Trendsetter, forward thinker, poet, novelist, gardener, lesbian lover...

Vita Sackville West was an iconic, eccentric figure of the early 20th century. Born in 1892 she was the grandaughter of a famous Spanish dancer, Pepito who had had an intimate liason with the 2nd Lord Sackville, Lional Sackville West. Their daughter Victoria Sackville West married her cousin, the 3rd Baron Sackville, Lionel Edward Sackville West and together they produced little Vita. Phew.

The newly arrived little Sackville West was christened Victoria too but to save confusion with her mother she was universally known as 'Vita'. Naturally, as the daughter of an English aristocrat, her upbringing was one of cultured privilege, though as a female, she was unable to inherit the family home Knole House in Kent,  after the death of her father. This was no small loss, as you can observe in the picture below...

Vita Sackville West's childhood home, 'Knole House' in Kent

A Serious Writer

Vita's interest in poetry began in childhood and at seventeen she had a volume of dramatic verse published privately - Chatterton. Throughout her life she published several more volumes of poetry, thirteen novels, including The Edwardians and All Passion Spent . In addition to this, West wrote books on history, biographical works and from 1947 wrote a regular column called In Your Garden for the Observer. Though she may have been on the wild side, she was no literary slouch and in 1946 was given a Companion of Honour for her services to literature.

Notoriety
Vita sackville West stood out in a crowd, as much physically as through her antics. She was strikingly tall...over six foot, which in the early 20s was a particularly noticable departure form the norm. Her clothes too, were flamboyant and original and she was among the first to paint her nails in daring, vivid colours.

At twenty-one she marrried politician Harold Nicolson, though the latter revealed quite early in the relationship that he enjoyed sexual relationships with other males. However, this proved no impediment to the longevity of their marriage and they remained together, despite many affairs on both sides of the union. Nor did it prevent them from producing two children together - Nigel, who like his father became a writer and politician and Benedict, an art historian.

Virginia Woolf

Vita and Harold were outer satellites of the Bloomsbury Group, a gathering of free-thinking Bohemian imtellectuals, who refused to live by the strict Victorian moral codes of their era. Virginia Woolf was a member, as was economist Maynard Keynes, critic Clive Bell and biographer Lytton Strachey. 

Although West had lesbian affairs with several women throughout her life, it was her romantic liason with Virginia Woolf in the late 20s that garnered the most notoriety. Woolf is said to have modelled the main character for her novel Orlando in her lover, Vita Sackville West and indeed, West's son Nigel described the book as "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature". Yet her most enduring affair was probably with Violet Kepple, the daughter of Edward VII's mistress, Alice Kepple, whom she had known since early adolescence. Rumor has it at one stage the pair eloped together to Paris and were only parted when their respective husbands trudged over there and persuaded them to return.

West died in 1962- post-WW2 she had become something of a recluse, devoting herself to her beloved interests - gardening and writing.

The Cloche Hat

Straw, felt and velvet appliqued cloche. Victoria &Albert Museum

The cloche was to the 1920s what the snood was to the '40s, only more so. Although it was not the only style of headwear around at the time, it's the one most associated with the period. Called a cloche because of its distinctive bell shape (cloche is French for bell), this hat sat low on the head, shading the eyes and giving the wearer an intriguing allure...

As a bonus, the quirky cloche added a little extra height as the top of the hat was rather bulbous - it was a style which complimented the short, bobbed hairstyles of the era and sometimes the hair was actually almost completely hidden beneath the cloche.

The 1920s collided with the emergence of the Art Deco period and many of the hats incorporated some of the characteristic design elements into the cloche, with the use of bold lines, deco appliques and Aztec zig zag seaming in greens, pinks, creams and blacks.

Creative

It was a very creative period from a fashion perspective and milliners were inspired by exotic locations and vampish fantasies. Some sought out stylistic inspiration from the Far East...Egypt, China, Japan and Russia. Apart from the ubiquitous cloche, headresses included tiaras, turbans, silk headbands, toques, kokoshniks and scarves elaborately knotted at one side. 


Just about everyone wore a hat in the 1920s and it would have been considered very poor taste to be seen out in public without something on your head. This was particularly true for men, as tipping your hat for a lady was standard practice.