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The Fashions of the Fourth Decade of the 20th Century

posted 17 years ago by HijodelCid
6 replies | jump to latest

I have been watching this week on TCM the LONE WOLF series, and I have been most delighted by the delicious fashions of the women in those movies. Evidently there was a big difference between the very drab frumpy fashions of the 1933 KING KONG and the very stylish fashions of THE WOMEN, and I suspect that the Great Depression was the reason for that drastic difference. In the early 30s, the Depression was hitting everybody hard; women obviously had things on their minds more urgent than looking attractive. By 1939, the Depression was receding, and women could now afford to pay more attention to their appearance and to start reemphasizing their sexuality.

[–] graham-stevens 17 years ago

Its also worth mentioning that this was a prestige MGM production, with a superb female cast, dressed by the in-house designer, Adrian.

[–] bess654 17 years ago

I love the fashion show.Most of those costumes were way over the top,but there were one or two that could be worn today without causing too much comment.
Heck,those clothes were a lot better than some of the tacky stuff we see on the red carpet today!

[–] AliciaHuberman59 17 years ago

It seems they were influenced by Surrealism (e.g. the "Eyes" blouse that Sylvia wore was Dali-esque, as in the dream sequence he designed for "Spellbound") and Modernism in general (e.g. the Trylon and Perisphere of the 1939 Worlds Fair.) That last scene of the fashion show wherein the model wears that black gown and hat against a WPA type mural background of test tubes looked as though she could have been at the DuPont pavilion at the Fair (assuming they had one.)

[–] Piperson 16 years ago

Some of the fashion show stuff looks like it came from Munchkinland. There are several pilgrim-style hats which look a lot like what Adrian also designed for the Wizard of Oz.

[–] whimsical5 16 years ago

The did look a LOT like Wizard of Oz.At Universal studios in Orlando, they have fake "Adrian" Shop, its not a store you can go in, but it has big store windows, and I am sure one of the outfits was from "The Women"
But I love that the monkey in the fashion show had an outfit to match the model!!!

nice socks, man.....

[–] dabukaba 12 years ago

I watch a lot of movies from the 1930s (my favorite decade in film, but that's a topic for another thread), and it was a very, VERY diverse decade in the US for pop culture in general including fashions. Much of it resembled what came before, while much of it (as we see in this movie) already resembled what would come after. A few of the fashions in this movie look even Victorian-inspired as it was still the early-20th century, but by far most of the fashions look drastically different from that and exactly the same as if this movie would have been released in the 1950s.