I’m going to comment of which my grandmother has said to me as she watched this. “ the dresses were comfortable and tight heels I must add! I was a little girl but can still remember when we had to occasionally wear different outfits throughout the day as I still do now the colors weren’t that wild but were at the same time. It was fun dressing up while my mother watched it was very funny to, I wish I could’ve walked down an aisle with those dresses but I was still just a girl I used to laugh at myself as I dressed in silly gowns those were the glory days, I’m 100 years old now and still look at life as it were the 20’s even though I spent very little time and my mother has passed on she passed on in 1967 and she was born in 1872 she loved those times and I see it as if she was still here.. my husband and I were married in 1939 however and the best years of my life were with him as he passed on in 2009 and we had our first child in 1941 and our grand daughter? Born in 1962 and her daughter.. 1991 my granddaughter died in a fire a few years ago or may I add many years ago in 1999 her daughter had her daughters and her son’s but most importantly she had family and no matter how old we are still here for each other”
Congratulations on living to be 100 years old. It is always so interesting to be able to talk to someone who actually lived in that era - the 1920's. My neighbor who passed away in 2011 lived to be 97 - born in 1914. Her name was Lillian and I used to love to hear her tell stories about the good old days. She once told me that "mother, daddy and I went to see that magician that was so popular then" I finally realized she was talking about Harry Houdini, and I about fainted. I couldn't believe I was talking to someone who had actually seen Houdini perform. Lillian was a treasure trove of old stories like that - she was a treasure herself.
@@dianekennedy7086 Makes me feel sad for myself as to I didn't asked these to my grandma- born in 1934. Passed away in 2018 😔 Although yes my dad still tells me the stories he heard from my grandma. The only thing I did heard directly from her mouth was when she saw the britishers at that time in our town (it was during the british colonial era). My dad recalls that she fondly talked about how she saw Britishers "leaving" from our town (and country, ofc).
Kitty Gordon had been an Edwardian star of the musical stage who morphed into a movie star appearing in about 20 films 1916-1919. She must have shelled out big bucks to make this short - with sound and color, in 1928. The first all talking/singing/dancing movies didn't appear until well into 1929.
@@gerberjoanne266 Aside from the occasional short experiment, the first full length "Sound" film was released in 1927, but true full length "all-talking" films didn't appear until 1929, like I said. 1928 was a lag year (a handful of "part talking" - silent with a few spoken scenes - being released). Thru most of transitional 1929 there were "Sound", "Silent", "Part-talking" & "All talking" films competing for attention.
July 6, 1928 "Lights of New York" premiered. It was the first all talking feature film. Warner Bros had released about 15-16 more sound films before the end of the year. It wasn't the first sound on film as Lee DeForest was making sound shorts as early as 1923.
My ultimate favorite decade ( 1920s), for clothes,makeup,hats,silk stockings,shoes,art deco!! Wedding dresses and flowers were out of this world Beautiful.
Kitty Gordon was a competent stage actress whose main asset was her beautiful back! A theatrical magazine in 1915 reported that it was insured for $50.000 dollars. So much for the old precept of "never turn your back to the audience"!!
Fascinating! Wish it came with details about the dresses such as material. The floral arrangement with the wedding gown completely covered up the dress! I love the shoes. Some look very modern.
The heels of the vintage shoes are set further in from the back of the foot and are wider. It is noted that this makes a shoe more comfortable to wear since it better supports the heel of the foot.
Very beautiful! This is the "classic 20s" look that some people assume spanned the entire decade. But these hems that were longer in the back than the fromt were late in the decade. It seemed that designers were already seeing an end to the short skirts and were easing women back into longer lengths by, basically, spliting the difference. Funny thing is, the short lengths themselves really only took off in 1925. Before that, dresses were really long and tube shaped.
Awe. What a new and promising time.. so long ago. Yet if not for people in that time, where would we be now? Oh and I don’t mean that In the negative sense, as to the direction of which the world has gone in so many ways ... just that of the positive influences along the way.
I loved the wedding dress and that big bouquet! The evening gowns were lovely as well. I think that's one of the things I so appreciated about "Downton Abbey" - the attention to detail of the 1920's costumes. I've got to hand it to Ralph Lauren - he did a great job.
I am completely, utterly, and fantastically shocked! The colouration and sound quality are to be praised. And the show itself is pure elegance...wow. My thanks for sharing this piece of fashion history!
Incredible how many of these looks had a real modern aspect to them. And I know that it took until around 1927-28 for the skirts to get this short, earlier in the decade they were still kind of long except for young women’s dresses for dancing the Charleston. By the way, the latter faded from popularity in the following decade - and was hard to do in the longer tighter clothes of the 30s.
The Shop owner saved the nicest dress for herself. Notice how the skirts weren't as short as most people think, hitting mostly beneath the knee and longer for evening. It was just shocking because hems used to go to the ground so you could see their ankles and calves, not their knees and thighs. The flappers would have been shocked by mini skirts and short shorts.
The reason these dresses look familiar is that the styles have been reimagined many times over through the decades. Dropped waist dresses were "in" in the 70's.
The twenties was the very first decade in women's fashion history that the length of the dresses were above the calves. This was a big deal. You'll see the hem lengths both rise and fall from the 1920's onward but it's this decade that did it first!
Sooo elegant !!!!! these styles were beautiful wonder if any of them were wearing Chanel no 5 perfume or Shalimar back then :).i would have love to of been around then!
1:55 Hey these look a lot modern (I forgot what were those skirts with such strings at the bottom called? Yeah they're still around, just more "flashy")
I wish there were more historically accurate dresses like these around today. I can't help but cringe any time someone dresses like the "20's" nowadays
On that same day in New York, notorious gangster Arnold Rothstein died after being shot two days earlier. The band sounds like Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orch who cut a version of "Roses of Yesterday" (Brunswick #4058)
I came here interested in the dresses, but I also play violin (or try to), so I got very distracted by the violinist’s locked wrist and what looks like a very painful neck position 🥴
Yeah, I remember people used to play violin with their necks all tilted sideways. Now, I see them play with straight necks and much better posture. I knew a worman who was a professional had a hunchback from years of playing the violin, had to give it up from all the pain.
was just looking for a new summer dress online.....watching these elegant and pretty dresses has made me lose all interest in buying the crappy stuff of today s clothing... ☹
the fashions were rather formless in that the accent was on a rather small chested boyish look re the overall shape. Also note that the women modeling sleeveless dresses did not shave their arm pits. Hmmm...I wonder when shaving the underarms was started as a standard beauty habit.
@@user-mv9tt4st9k You know,....it really more of a cleanliness thing when it comes to shaving your underarms. Leaving them au' natural ends up smelling because of the hair trapping moisture, creating bacteria, thus creating BO. The 70's bra burning naturalist women were idiots rejecting their femaleness. It has ended up backfiring on them these days. Kind of like all this political correctness and cancel culture bs that is going around now. Like you have to be ashamed of who and what you are via race, religion, and sex wise.
I'm too short and busty. This style wouldn't have been flattering for my shape either (it would have looked like a sack hanging straight down from my boob shelf). Having a long and/or rectangular and flat shape worked best with with this style. But it does look lovely on these ladies and I can appreciate how beautiful the designs are. Fashions that emphasize curves (especially with cinched waists) are just right for me.
It is funny because the drop waist straight lined dresses are sometimes emphasized as typical for the 1920s, and they were not. The fashion of the 1920s ran the gamut and suited pretty much every body style. 😊
Holy cow, that bride’s bouquet looks like she’s got the Botanical Gardens in front of her.😅 way too big. My goodness. And the Evening gowns made no sense because they didn’t go to the floor like the ones I grew up with & I was born in 1963. Can’t figure why you would call those dresses, gowns.
You have to understand the era. This was after the first World war AND it was after the long eras of men and women in the western culture wearing layers and layers of under clothes. At this time, women don't wear corsets anymore, the one being joked around as the underwear for women where they can't breathe (debunked but it has its own big issues...). This is the era of the too-infamous Coco Chanel aka the Chanel brand. Women have also shortened their hair, a progenitor to Pixie Cuts or short hair for women. It's also in the 1920s that the black Tuxedo would become in for men, so formal wear would be simplified and not too complex, but still elegant.
