Book: researching the 'twenties.
Finally I'm onto the meat of the book, after sketching things out for months. This week I'm immersing myself in the 1920s.
I've accepted that as lovely as it is to be home and doing laundry and housework and other things, there are too many distractions and I get more written if I'm isolated - so this is taking the form of cafes without wifi access. No wifi access means that I won't get sidetracked by the 'net.
This morning I enjoyed breakfast and research book number one at the Corner Store in Fitzroy North. Now I'm home for a quick swap of books (and a load of washing) before heading off to no-wifi-cafe number two.
One of the challenges about the book is that I want everything to be thoroughly researched: I want to challenge every belief that I've held for god knows how long so that I don't include anything that's not true. That's another reason I want to keep away from teh internet. It's awash with misunderstandings and half truths.
Example: if I read one more time that "Coco Chanel liberated women from the corset" I'll scream! It's possible that this came from something that she said later in life:
"I must tell you something of significance. Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. The problem of fashion in 1925 was different. Women were just beginning to go to work in offices. I inspired the cutting of the hair short because it goes with the modern woman. To the woman going to work, I said to take off the bone corset, because women cannot work while they are imprisoned in a corset."
It's a chicken and egg thing: what came first? The social change or the fashion style? As much as I love Chanel, surely the designer can not popularise a style if the social climate is not right? Many have tried to introduce new styles but if the community isn't ready for them, they just don't gain acceptance.
Just ask Amelia Bloomer, way ahead of her time with trousers for women in 1851. She was ridiculed, the poor love. The idea was reintroduced in the 1920s as beach pyjamas but it would take another decade before brave fashion-setters would wear them in "public" and they were still restricted to casual workwear until the early 1970s when they finally took off as an acceptable and attractive form of dress. During the '80s they were still frowned upon in many workplaces and as recently as the mid 90s I've seen letters to newspaper editors by old fashioned men (and some women) who continue to decry their unattractiveness and inappropriateness. I mean, really! They're just trousers.
So, Coco darling, love your work but fashionable ladies were bobbing their hair and ditching the corsets a long time before your revolution of 1925.
It's one of the things that fascinates me the most: the impact social change has on how we dress. If only the chicken-egg question was as easy to answer.
I've accepted that as lovely as it is to be home and doing laundry and housework and other things, there are too many distractions and I get more written if I'm isolated - so this is taking the form of cafes without wifi access. No wifi access means that I won't get sidetracked by the 'net.
This morning I enjoyed breakfast and research book number one at the Corner Store in Fitzroy North. Now I'm home for a quick swap of books (and a load of washing) before heading off to no-wifi-cafe number two.
One of the challenges about the book is that I want everything to be thoroughly researched: I want to challenge every belief that I've held for god knows how long so that I don't include anything that's not true. That's another reason I want to keep away from teh internet. It's awash with misunderstandings and half truths.
Example: if I read one more time that "Coco Chanel liberated women from the corset" I'll scream! It's possible that this came from something that she said later in life:
"I must tell you something of significance. Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. The problem of fashion in 1925 was different. Women were just beginning to go to work in offices. I inspired the cutting of the hair short because it goes with the modern woman. To the woman going to work, I said to take off the bone corset, because women cannot work while they are imprisoned in a corset."
It's a chicken and egg thing: what came first? The social change or the fashion style? As much as I love Chanel, surely the designer can not popularise a style if the social climate is not right? Many have tried to introduce new styles but if the community isn't ready for them, they just don't gain acceptance.
Just ask Amelia Bloomer, way ahead of her time with trousers for women in 1851. She was ridiculed, the poor love. The idea was reintroduced in the 1920s as beach pyjamas but it would take another decade before brave fashion-setters would wear them in "public" and they were still restricted to casual workwear until the early 1970s when they finally took off as an acceptable and attractive form of dress. During the '80s they were still frowned upon in many workplaces and as recently as the mid 90s I've seen letters to newspaper editors by old fashioned men (and some women) who continue to decry their unattractiveness and inappropriateness. I mean, really! They're just trousers.
So, Coco darling, love your work but fashionable ladies were bobbing their hair and ditching the corsets a long time before your revolution of 1925.
It's one of the things that fascinates me the most: the impact social change has on how we dress. If only the chicken-egg question was as easy to answer.