The Golden Age of Glamour
New BBC Two drama Dancing On The Edge tells the story of a jazz band in 1930s London – and its sophisticated style is a real inspiration.
With Downton Abbey we flirted with fl apper fashions, but now we’ve moved on to the grown-up glamour of style icons such as Wallis Simpson, Bette Davis and Greta Garbo.
‘The overall image and indeed beauty ideal of the 1930s had been one that glorifi ed youthful shapes,’ Emmanuelle Dirix writes in 1930s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook. ‘The 1930s present something quite different: a much more mature, elegant and what could be described as a more feminine silhouette and look. The 1930s working woman was, as it were, an “all grown-up version” of the 1920s flapper.’
Fashion then, falling as it did between the Jazz Age and the horrors of the Second World War, has not drawn as much attention from the fashion world as other eras. But Dancing On The Edge focuses us on the folly of this.
‘The 1930s was truly the golden age of glamour, and this was nowhere more emphatically expressed than in the realm of women’s fashions,’ explains Dirix. ‘Despite the backdrop of the Great Depression and the ensuing hardship and poverty that were a daily reality for many, the fashions of the 1930s generally expressed a sense of luxurious elegance.’
1930s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook, edited by Charlotte Fiell and Emmanuelle Dirix, is published by Goodman Fiell, priced £30.
With Downton Abbey we flirted with fl apper fashions, but now we’ve moved on to the grown-up glamour of style icons such as Wallis Simpson, Bette Davis and Greta Garbo.
‘The overall image and indeed beauty ideal of the 1930s had been one that glorifi ed youthful shapes,’ Emmanuelle Dirix writes in 1930s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook. ‘The 1930s present something quite different: a much more mature, elegant and what could be described as a more feminine silhouette and look. The 1930s working woman was, as it were, an “all grown-up version” of the 1920s flapper.’
Fashion then, falling as it did between the Jazz Age and the horrors of the Second World War, has not drawn as much attention from the fashion world as other eras. But Dancing On The Edge focuses us on the folly of this.
‘The 1930s was truly the golden age of glamour, and this was nowhere more emphatically expressed than in the realm of women’s fashions,’ explains Dirix. ‘Despite the backdrop of the Great Depression and the ensuing hardship and poverty that were a daily reality for many, the fashions of the 1930s generally expressed a sense of luxurious elegance.’
1930s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook, edited by Charlotte Fiell and Emmanuelle Dirix, is published by Goodman Fiell, priced £30.