Flapper Fashion and Style: Bobbed Hair, Beads, and Boas

In 1925, a young woman in a Paris nightclub might have been wearing a dress designed by Coco Chanel of dark silk jersey, a long rope of fake pearls, and a cloche hat pulled down over her bobbed hair. A few thousand miles away, a young woman in a New York speakeasy might have been wearing a dress she had bought at Saks Fifth Avenue for $200, a feathered headband from B. Altman & Co., T-strap shoes from I. Miller, and the long cigarette holder that Edward Bernays had just made into a symbol of female emancipation. Both women would have looked, to a 1900 eye, shocking — the dresses too short, the hair too short, the makeup too visible, the bare arms and legs too visible, the cigarette in the hand too scandalous. To a 1925 eye, they would have looked fashionable. The flapper fashion is examined as a social phenomenon in the flapper movement and in who were the flappers; this page is about the specific garments, hairstyles, and accessories that made up the look.

The End of the Corset

The most revolutionary thing about the flapper look was what was no longer there. The corset, the stiff, boned undergarment that had shaped the female body for almost five hundred years, was abandoned in the 1920s. The corset had been weakening as a piece of everyday clothing since the early 1900s, when the S-bend and straight-front styles had moved the focus from the waist to the bust and hips, but the flapper generation was the first to reject the corset entirely. By 1925, the corset was worn by only a small minority of American women, and by 1930 it had effectively disappeared from the modern wardrobe.

The undergarment that replaced the corset was the brassiere (or bra), a garment that had been patented in 1914 by Mary Phelps Jacob (Caresse Crosby), a New York socialite who had sewn two silk handkerchiefs together with a ribbon. The brassiere supported the bust without compressing the waist, and it became the standard female undergarment of the 1920s and after. The step-in panties and garter belts of the 1920s completed the new undergarment ensemble. The new look, with its straight lines and lack of waist constriction, was the visual foundation for the flapper dress.

The Silhouette: Dropped Waist, Knee-Length

The most distinctive feature of the 1920s dress was the dropped waist. The Victorian dress had emphasized the natural waist, with a tightly fitted bodice ending in a horizontal seam at the smallest part of the torso. The 1920s dress, by contrast, dropped the seam to the hips, creating a long, lean, columnar line that made the body look like a single unbroken column. The bust was minimized, the hips were minimized, and the entire figure was meant to look as if it had been poured into a single long tube.

The hemline of the 1920s dress also rose dramatically. In 1900, the hemline of a fashionable dress had been at the floor. By 1910, it had risen to the ankle. By 1920, it was at the calf. By 1925, it was at the knee. By 1927, the most daring flappers were showing several inches of leg above the knee. The 1927 Broadway musical Hit the Deck and the 1928 film Our Dancing Daughters showed off the new hemlines; the older generation was horrified, but the fashion was already set. The hemline would not return to floor length until 1947, when Christian Dior’s “New Look” would end the brief age of the knee-length dress. Until then, the knee was the standard.

The Cloche Hat

The most distinctive single accessory of the 1920s was the cloche hat (from the French cloche, meaning “bell”). The cloche was a close-fitting, bell-shaped hat, often made of felt, that was pulled down low over the forehead and over the ears, framing the face and emphasizing the bobbed hair. The cloche was the perfect hat for the bobbed hair of the flapper, and it became almost universal among fashionable women in the 1920s. The hats were often decorated with a single ribbon, a feather, a bow, or a small ornament at the side. The “Merry Widow” hat, a wide-brimmed version that had been fashionable in 1910, was a distant memory.

The cloche was not the only hat of the era. The beret (popularized by Coco Chanel), the turban (popularized by Paul Poiret before the war and revived in the 1920s), and the picture hat (still seen at formal occasions) were also worn. But for everyday wear, the cloche was the standard.

The Bobbed Haircut

The 1920s bob was the most revolutionary piece of the flapper look. The Victorian ideal had been long, piled-up hair, often ornamented with combs, pins, flowers, and even artificial additions. The bob, a short cut that ended at the jaw or just below the ears, was a radical departure from this tradition.

The bob had been pioneered before the war by the dancer Irene Castle (1893–1969), wife of the dance-band leader Vernon Castle, who had her hair cut short in 1913 because her long hair had interfered with her dancing. The “Castle bob” became a fashion in the 1910s, and the bob became a major fashion of the 1920s, especially after 1920, when movie actresses like Colleen Moore and Louise Brooks popularized the look. By 1925, the bob was the standard fashionable hairstyle for young women, and the “shingle” (a closely cropped version that exposed the neck) and the “Eton crop” (an even shorter version) were also seen. The most famous bob of the era was the severe, helmet-like cut worn by Louise Brooks in her German films of 1929, which became the visual definition of the type for the next century.

Bobbed hair was controversial. Many mothers refused to let their daughters bob their hair; some schools, workplaces, and even restaurants refused entry to bobbed women; the cartoonist John Held Jr. made a career out of poking fun at the “flapper” with the bob. By the end of the decade, however, the bob was so widespread that it was no longer controversial, and the long-haired Victorian ideal was the exception rather than the rule.

The Dress Itself

The 1920s dress was, depending on the occasion, made of silk, satin, chiffon, crepe de chine, or wool. The most distinctive features were:

Fringe: Layers of fringe on a dress created movement when the wearer danced; the Charleston in particular looked spectacular in a fringed dress
Beading and sequins: Elaborate beading and sequins, often in geometric Art Deco patterns, were a signature of the evening dress
Handkerchief hem: A dress with a hem that came to points like a series of handkerchiefs, often asymmetrical
Asymmetric necklines: Necklines that went up on one side and down on the other, often with a sash tie
Sash ties: Long sashes that could be tied at the hip or the side
Dropped waist: The signature of the 1920s silhouette
Loose fit: The dress was not fitted to the body; it hung straight from the shoulders
T-strap shoes and Mary Janes: Strappy shoes that emphasized the bare ankle

The most famous evening dresses of the era were designed in Paris by Coco Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet (1876–1975, the inventor of the bias cut), and Jean Patou (1880–1936, the creator of the modern tennis dress and the modern knit suit). The “garçonne” or “boyish” look of the 1920s was a French import; the American designers, many of whom worked in New York’s Garment District, were quick to copy the Paris shows.

The Makeup

The 1920s saw the rise of the visible, deliberately applied makeup look that has been the standard for women ever since. Before the 1920s, makeup had been considered slightly disreputable, something that actresses and “loose” women used; respectable women were expected to be natural. The flapper changed this. The 1920s flapper wore:

Rouge: Heavy rouge on the cheeks, often in round circles
Lipstick: Dark red lipstick, often in a slightly heart-shaped mouth; the lip was meant to be a small, defined “Cupid’s bow”
Kohl-rimmed eyes: Eyeliner, often in dark black, that emphasized the eyes; the look was inspired by the silent film actresses and the Egyptian and Orientalist fashion of the period
Painted “beauty mark”: A small black dot on the cheek, often placed near the mouth, recalling the 18th-century “mouches” or beauty patches
Powdered face: A pale, matte face, achieved with heavy powder

The leading American cosmetic company of the 1920s was Max Factor, founded in 1909 by the Polish-born Maksymilian Faktorowicz, who had been a makeup artist for the Moscow Art Theatre before emigrating to the United States. Factor’s 1920s innovations included the first makeup for the new medium of motion pictures, the first pan-stick rouge, and the first waterproof mascara. Elizabeth Arden (1878–1966), the Canadian-born founder of the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics company, and Helena Rubinstein (1872–1965), the Polish-born founder of Helena Rubinstein cosmetics, were the other major cosmetics entrepreneurs of the era.

The Accessories

The 1920s flapper was defined, in part, by her accessories. The most important were:

Long ropes of pearls: Often fake, but always long, sometimes knotted at the waist; the pearls were a signature of the flapper
Long beaded necklaces: Multiple strands of beads, often long enough to be knotted at the waist
Cigarette holder: The long cigarette holder, often in ivory or bakelite, was a signature of the flapper look
Feathered headband: A band of feathers, often ostrich, that sat on the forehead
Fox stole: A long, fluffy fox stole, often worn with the evening dress
T-strap shoes: Strappy, low-heeled shoes that emphasized the bare ankle
Rolled stockings: Sheer stockings that ended in a rolled band at the top of the calf
The “garter”: A long ribbon or chain that hung from the garter belt to the hem of the dress
The “vanity case”: A small, often silver or enameled case that held the cigarettes, the matches, and the powder

The Hollywood Influence

The 1920s flapper look was, in large part, an American Hollywood look. The silent film studios, with their need to dress hundreds of actresses in the most fashionable clothing for close-up photographs, were the most powerful fashion engine in the country. The studios’ costume departments, with budgets that exceeded those of the great Parisian fashion houses, created the looks that ordinary women imitated.

The most influential studio flappers of the era were:

Clara Bow in It (1927) and Wings (1927)
Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Modern Maidens (1929)
Colleen Moore in Flaming Youth (1923) and Irene (1926)
Norma Shearer in The Divorcee (1930) and Let Us Be Gay (1930)
Anita Page in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and The Broadway Melody (1929)

The Hollywood flapper look was, of course, also influenced by the Paris designers, and the Paris designers were in turn influenced by the Hollywood stars. The cross-pollination produced the international flapper look that, by 1928, was being imitated in cities from Berlin to Tokyo to Buenos Aires.

The End of the Flapper Look

The flapper look began to fade in 1929, when the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression brought the era of cocktail parties and nightclub dancing to an end. The hemline fell to the ankle, the waistline returned to the natural waist, and the long hair returned. The Hollywood studios replaced the flapper with the more conservative “lady” of the early 1930s. The bobbed hair, the long cigarette, the Cupid’s bow mouth, and the drop-waist dress would all be revived in later decades, but the 1920s flapper look itself, with all its romance and its rebellion, was a thing of the past.

The flapper look was, in the end, the first great fashion statement of the modern age. It was created by the new mass media, the new mass entertainment, the new mass production of clothing and cosmetics, and the new role of women in American public life. It was a fashion of its time, but it has never really gone out of style; the bobbed hair, the little black dress, and the Cupid’s bow mouth have been revived in every decade since, and the image of the flapper remains the visual definition of the 1920s American culture and the flapper movement.