Worn to Dance: A 1920s Fashion and Beading Exhibit at Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles
By Kij Greenwood Buckle up your dancing shoes and throw away your cares, because the Twenties are coming back around! Almost one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age saw dramatic social change in America. A new generation of women was, for the first time ever, voting, driving, spending their own money, smoking and drinking in public, bobbing their long hair, […]
Miss Fisher Con 1920s Fashion
By Jean MartinGBACG Finery Editor With “Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears” premiering at the Palm Springs Film Festival last month and it’s imminent arrival in theaters (on February 27, 2020) and streaming (Acorn TV starting on March 23, 2020), I am reminded of the Miss Fisher Con that I attended last July in San Jose. It was the […]
A 1940s Aesthetic Guide
By Frankie LopezGBACG President The following links are my personal recommendations to achieve The 40s Aesthetic. Here are some resources and techniques to achieve this quintessential look. Hair Lotta Body Setting Lotion I typically dilute this in a spray bottle, and use it for my wet sets. This brand has been around since the 1970s and it is a great […]
Dressing for the 1940s USO Tea
By Kathe GustGBACG Membership Coordinator There are two things I will not be addressing in this article. I won’t discuss military uniforms, because if you wear uniforms you likely know more about that than I do. If you want confirmation of your authenticity, I suggest you look for articles like this one by expert Byron Connell “WWII U.S. Army Officers’ […]
Dior: The Day the Hem Stood Out
by Frankie Lopez. Published June 29, 2018, as a Facebook note. Post World War II, Europe and America were still reeling from devastation. Cars, clothes, rubber, and other consumables continued to be monitored and rationed. On either side of the Atlantic, wearing clothing that squandered fabric was considered unpatriotic and wasteful. Fashion was of secondary concern, and the style at […]
Lovely Ladies with Lavish Coiffures
By Sally Norton. Published in the September/October 2016 issue of Finery. Hair and hats were an important feature in La Belle Époque, both on stage and off. The large hat, often with up-turned brim, sat forward on the coiffure, emphasizing the extraordinary forward tilt of the early 1900s woman. The hat, an increasingly elaborate affair, could be an inconvenience at […]
There’s No Crying in Baseball
by Lynne Taylor. Published in the January/February 2015 issue of Finery. Just about everyone has seen the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.” It stars Tom Hanks as a former professional baseball player, who becomes the coach for a women’s professional baseball team. The movie is entertaining and contains a mix of history and fancy that served to expose […]
Beatnik Fashion
Not every member of the Beat Generation wore a beret by Kali Pappas, First published for the September/October 2014 issue of Finery As any fan of the Beat Generation writers will tell you, there’s a chasmic difference between the beret-wearing, bongo-beating “beatnik” of popular imagination and the people who created and lived the Beat philosophy in the 1940s, 50s, and […]
Bra Support Comes of Age: The history of the bra, 1920-1930 *
by Carol Wood, First published for the November/December 2013 issue of Finery “The history of the chest is as much about its suppression as it is about its augmentation” Harold Koda Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed Underwear and outerwear tag team change and for the brassiere this is no exception. Women’s under-fashion evolved from the constraining corset to the flapper’s […]
Japonisme or Not?
by Sandy Vrooman, First published for the March/April 2013 issue of Finery When trying to trace the influences of one culture to another, where does one start? In the case of Oriental influences on western fashion, we could go back to Marco Polo’s travels and the introduction of silk to European royalty; the flat Chinese fans used at Versailles, and […]
