Socio economic changes that occurred during the First World War 1914-18 and became accepted, changed the role of women in a way that no amount of campaigning by a few liberated ladies could have achieved.
The costume history image in our minds of a woman of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ is actually likely to be the image of a flapper. Flappers did not truly emerge until 1926. Flapper fashion embraced all things and styles modern. A fashionable flapper had short sleek hair, a shorter than average shapeless shift dress, a chest as flat as a board, wore make up and applied it in public, smoked with a long cigarette holder, exposed her limbs and epitomised the spirit of a reckless rebel who danced the nights away in the Jazz Age.
Between 1920 and 1924 skirts remained calf length with fluctuations of an inch or two according to garment style. Skirts were actually still rather long, but were designed to confuse. Skirts only revealed the knee briefly between 1926 and 1928, and this was the only period when evening dresses were short in line with day dress lengths. This was the flapper fashion era.
These cool photos were found by Vintage Cars & People that defined street fashion of young women in the 1920s.
