Roaring into the 1920's - Barnstormers to Bootleggers

Another fun program! I love working with the National Automobile Museum. Their programs are historical and make for an interesting afternoon. Any historical program they organize is a fantastic event to receive CEU's if you are an educator. This event is Barnstormers to Bootleggers. Now on to pulling this together with power point, music, dancing, and costumes. We have a lot to do! This is Interpretation at it's best with some of Lauren's costumes.

Synopsis for National Automobile Museum symposium
           program, March 29, with Lauren, American Duchess

The Bee’s Knees and the Cat’s Meow, Fashionistas 1920’s Style

The 1920's - a time that is often referred to as the "Roaring Twenties" - a boisterous period characterized by rapidly changing lifestyles, financial excesses, and the fast pace of technological progress. 

A new woman evolved in the twenties, redefining womanhood. It was more acceptable for her  to smoke and drink in public, wear shorter hair styles and make-up, and skimpy and shorter dresses.  There was also a greater participation in the workforce because the new woman of the '20s wanted to work, not because she had to.  This all contributed to the new breed of woman in the twenties.

Fashion also kept up with the fast pace of change in the 20’s.  It was the beginning of a new era of fashion freedom for women. Women would shed the confining corsets and multi under layers of foundation garments of the teen’s to the minimal under garments that produced the boyish silhouette that so stylizes the twenties. Men on the other hand would settle into the silhouette of the three piece suit that is still the epitome of proper business attire today. 

The “little black dress,” has its birth in the twenties and still survives today as a fashion necessity, with plenty of accessories, the ticket to being fashionable in the twenties. And the flapper dress, what was that and who wore it?  The proper names of clothes to have in your closet in 1921 were: the one piece coat dress, the waist line dress, the tuxedo-scarf dress, the long waist dress, a Kimono Waist-Line Dress, and a tunic dress, quite different from today's typical jeans and t-shirts.

During this presentation, we will move through this decade of fashion, and explore these fashions as they interact with society.  From the Speakeasy to the lawn party, dancing the Charleston or the Foxtrot, listening to Jazz, the Devil’s music, and dealing with that inconvenient Prohibition, we will look how fashion collided with daily life, the night life, and the law.

 Some originals fashions will be displayed and fashions will be modeled of the twenties.