Historical Trends in Women's Fashion

By the 1780s fashionable women’s attire had become much softer. The bodice is puffed out in front, and a neckerchief often filled in the low neckline. The wide skirts, hooped petticoats, and stiff look favored two decades earlier were replaced by flowing, pale fabrics.                                   

A new accessory in the late 1790s was the reticule bag. Women had previously carried their pockets about the waist hidden in a big skirt . 

By the 1820s, reticules were called handbags, made of either soft drawn up leather or rigid hard leathers or decorative materials. Parasols and small folding fans, were used as decorative rather than functional accessories. By 1911, the huge fur, feather or silk muffs that were popular disappeared in favor of a smaller, rounder muff. 

Throughout the 1800's women wore a limited amount of jewelry. Dainty necklaces and other pieces including jeweled hair combs were popular, using Greek inspired styles.  

During the mid-1800's almost all women in North America and Europe wore corsets, though the corsets were not nearly as tight as popular legend has it. The 17- inch (43 cm) waist that was attributed to Victorian women was so rare as to be essentially mythical. Corsets were advertised and sold in waist sizes ranging from 18 to 30 in (46-76 cm). Larger sizes with waists measuring up to 42 inches (107 cm) were also available. There is no evidence that corsets caused serious health problems, as is widely believed.

Young women increasingly adopted radical new fashions, including short skirts, short hair, and makeup after World War I. Hemlines had begun to rise noticeably in 1915 but then stabilized at mid-calf. Skirts slowly creeping upwards, reached the knees only for a brief period from about 1924 to 1928. Stockings went from black or white wool or cotton to flesh-colored silk or rayon as skirts grew shorter. By 1929 hemlines had begun to fall. The exposure of the female legs was one of the most revolutionary developments in 20th-century fashion.

In the 1920s, in the United States and Canada, a young woman who embraced the radical new clothing fashions was known as a flapper. Short dresses that were straight up and down, with low waistlines on the hips, were the new fashion craze, made even more boyish by the use of a flattening brassiere. Many women cut their hair short in a chin-length, straight hairstyle known as a bob. They wore a close-fitting, helmet-shaped hat called a cloche over their bobbed hair. A frequently heard complaint was that women looked like boys. But what contradicted this view was the facial makeup that flappers adopted with enthusiasm

Enter your search terms Submit search form