When most people think of 1930s fashion, they think of Chanel. But there’s much more to fashion during the Great Depression and interwar years, between World War I and World War II, than the legendary French designer.
In The Museum at FIT’s latest exhibit “Elegance in an Age of Crisis: Fashions of the 1930s,” two Chanel dresses are on display among gorgeous designs by lesser-known ’30s couturiers including Madeleine Vionnet, Alix Grès, Augustabernard, Louiseboulanger, Adrian and Claire McCardell.
On March 13, I toured the 1930s fashion exhibit with Patricia Mears, deputy director for The Museum at FIT and the exhibit’s co-curator (G. Bruce Boyer, former editor at GQ and Esquire, also co-curated). “In many ways . . . this is the birth of modern clothing as we think of it today. Everything looks like something you could put on and wear today,” Mears said.
1 Little Black Dress – 5 Different Outfits
Here are 10 things you should know about 1930s fashion, according to Mears.
1. Classicism and the Natural Body
“In the ’20s, you’re already seeing softer clothes for women, the tubular silhouette . . . but the problem with the ’20s style is it didn’t flatter most people. It was great for very slender bodies and it was great for surface ornamentation. The ’30s looked for a balance. How can you bring back some definition of the natural body—you see a waist, hips, still a long lean line—but one that is not quite so obfuscated. We see classicism coming back into play . . . It’s not draped over a corset, but it’s the sense of classicism of the natural body.”
2. Menswear Showed Off the Natural Body
“Development in menswear started to highlight the natural body.
They did it without creating a rigid structured form. The jackets, you can’t tell this just by looking at them, there’s no inner structure . . . You’ll see that the jacket has a little bit of shape and is completely soft. There’s no shoulder pad, no interfacing, no lining. It’s just material so it’s more like a shirt than a jacket .
. . The exact same thing was happening in womenswear. Very often the two sides, men and women, you don’t see a parallel history. Here you did.”
3. Haute Couture Declined
“In the Great Depression, there was a great downturn. In fact, there was probably about half as much haute couture made in the ’30s as there was in the ’20s . . . Here [in the exhibit] virtually everything is custom-made with a few exceptions . . . Bespoke tailoring is starting to be replaced by ready-to-wear.”
4. The Hollywood Influence
“Especially with films, pop culture was still ironically very buoyant. The movies were in many ways glamorous and positive. Even the gangster films had an allure of glamour to them. There was a very strong, aspirational quality to pull yourself up out of this.”
5. Era of Female Designers
“The 1930s was the great era of women dominating high fashion in terms of making it. All the great couturiers were women with a few exceptions. Same thing in New York. All the big names in design were women. I think the only area where you see a dominance of male designers was in Hollywood. And the clothes there tend to be a little glitzy . . .”
“We really think there was an undercurrent of technical people behind the names that did so much. And it’s why we don’t want to completely obliterate someone like Chanel who’s very worthy of study, but she was not someone who did her own technical designs. She was much more a stylist than a designer.”
6. New Technology and the Bias
“New technologies are available. A couple of examples: taking traditional materials, like lamé, and making them much lighter. The velvets become featherweight. The fibers are now finer. The other thing is they’re able to weave much longer, wider lengths of fabric. The dye vats become much larger. So suddenly you have broader canvases of fabric to work with. One of the great inventions is crepe. High twist threads are now woven into fabrics and they have a slightly spongier quality. This gave the greatest couturiers like Madeleine Vionnet the opportunity to drape on the bias, which is the quintessential look of that time period. The dresses that just sort of fall.”
7. Unembellished Fashions
“If you embroidered tulle on the bias, the thing is going to be very difficult to control. This is why the 1920s was so good for surface ornamentation; you’re looking at almost a flat canvas. You have an uninterrupted surface. Also, if you look at the revival of classicism, embellishment wasn’t really apart of that.”
8. What Women Wore Under a 1930s Gown
“Theoretically nothing. We know that Vionnet made slips specifically for all of the dresses. You would get a custom-made couture slip to go with your dress. The problem is, most of them got separated. But a lot of them [designers] wanted you to wear nothing . . . On average, people were thinner than they are today. And the other thing is, there was more acceptance of the natural body.”
9. The “Letty Lynton” Dress
“This particular dress worn by Joan Crawford and designed by Adrian took the American market by storm. Everybody did their version. Macy’s did a line, and the report is tens of thousands of this dress sold. Sears even did it. We found an ad for the ‘Letty Lynton’ dress, gingham-checked, very similar to this for $1.29. So you could have your little piece of glamour. Joan Crawford was an especially important movie star because she was always the working girl who was trying to make it big or made it big. You associated with her struggling. That you could capture a bit of this for yourself was something that was very poignant.”
10. 1930s Influence on 1970s Halston
“Alix Grès, who was just starting her career around 1930, was the great classicist. This was a theme she used throughout her career. She started to design clothes that draped on the bias and had pleating. Halston took a lot of his cues from her. And if you look at [Alix Grès’s] designs and [Halston’s] designs from the ’70s, it’s very clear that he must have been influenced by her.”
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