25/06/2014
The Roaring Twenties
Hur Minn echoing the design aesthetic and sensibilities of our creative director, who like Hur fancies the Roaring Twenties.
“My primary inspiration is 1920s and 1930s American menswear. I’ve always romanticized the Jazz Age era, when suits were everyday wear. There was no concept of ‘casual attire’ with jeans. Everyone wore tailored garments; a three-piece suit with a fedora and a walking cane, stuff like that. [It was a time when] people cared about class and culture… My collections are more about reviving the true American classics and highlighting the elegance of man, rather than dandy-ness." Hur Minn
The nineteen-twenties era bears many parallels to today. It was a fascinating period of time. While Hur Minn gives you a heads up on tailoring, Dapper Noir would like to share other aspects of what made the twenties so special.
Movies were an art form that captured the interest of the masses worldwide. As a new form of entertainment their success was extremely rapid. They entertained and made people laugh, making the world a happier place to live in after the horrors of WW1.
A cinephile knows the 20s represented a revolution; it was the first in terms of many aspects. First part-talkie released in 1927, first all-talking feature released in 1928 and first all-colour all-talking feature released in 1929.
The first movie theatres were called Nickelodeons, and were very basic compared the luxurious picture palaces that followed but what an aura of magic and mystery, of laughter and tears clung to them! Before the era of movie soundtracks, to the sounds of a tinkling piano, Pearl White faced her perils, Francis X. Bushman caused fluttering hearts, Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle set zany standards, never to be excelled, and a host of beautiful ladies smiled, wept and were alluring. It appeared as a realm of fantastic and childish make-believe situated in a never-never land called Hollywood, but gradually the whole world came to idolize its heroes and heroines and clowns, and to copy them.
The huge Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio was founded by Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer in 1924. The 1920’s also saw the premier of the first Walt Disney animated cartoon and the debut of Mickey Mouse. The 20’s brought the collective force of Cecil DeMille, Henry Beaumont, Fritz Lang, D.W. Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, Douglas Faribanks, Gloria Swanson and Harry Houdini to the world.
The Roaring Twenties also known as the Jazz Age would not be anything without the music. This decade saw the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith Art Tatum and Joe Oliver. Joe Oliver’s influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today." By the mid-1920s, jazz was being played in dance halls and roadhouses and speakeasies all over the country. Early jazz influences found their first mainstream expression in the music used by marching bands and dance bands of the day, which was the main form of popular concert music in the early twentieth century . In its early years jazz was considered the devils music by diverse segments of the American public. Vigorous public debate raged between supporters and detractors. A typical exchange took place between music critic Ernest Newman who debunked Jazz in a 1927 magazine article, with a reply soon forthcoming from jazz-king Paul Whiteman who argued that jazz was a genuine musical force - and we know who history shows was correct in his views.
Women’s fashions in the early 1920's experienced dramatic changes following the end of the WW1. 1920's Dresses were lighter, brighter and shorter than ever before. Fashion designers played with fabric colours, textures and patterns to create totally new styles of dress. Evening dresses, coats and jackets were often trimmed with fur. Hemlines rose for most of the decade but dropped slightly toward the end.
Shoes and stockings assumed a greater prominence now that they were more visible. Silk stockings in all the colours of the rainbow, often with patterns, were designed to match the coordinated outfits of stylish women.
Correspondence schools flourished in the inter-war period as people sought to educate themselves and create a better future for themselves and their families. Dressmaking and millinery courses in particular were embraced by women who wanted the new fashions but couldn't afford retail prices. Others were looking to create full or part-time jobs for themselves. Gabrielle Chanel is proof that millinery courses helped women’s aspirations towards a better future.
Pantsuits, hats and canes that gave women a sleek look without frills and avoiding the fickleness of fashion were popular for a while. In Europe, this look featured women with short hair (Bubikopf) for the first time; in the U.S., "the bob" was reintroduced by actress Louise Brooks in the late 1920s.
Thus, the Roaring Twenties redefined womanhood — a new woman evolved; it became more acceptable to smoke and drink in public, closer body contact in dancing, shorter hair, make-up, different styles of dress, and greater participation in the workforce - all contributed to the new woman.
Where would the 20’s be without The Lost Generation, a collective of writers and artists?
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot - The ultimate indictment of the modern world's loss of personal, moral, and spiritual values.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - The American dream that anyone can achieve anything
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner - Details the moral decay of the Old South
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston - Black life in a Black community
A. A. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh
Ernest Hemingway publishes The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms
Kahlil Gibran publishes The Prophet
Virginia Woolf publishes Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own and Orlando
James Joyce publishes Ulysses
Franz Kafka publishes The Trial
Erich Maria Remarque publishes All Quiet on the Western Front
Aldous Huxley publishes his inaugural novel Crome Yellow
The 1920s was the time of the Prohibition. During Prohibition, the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages were restricted or illegal. Prohibition was supposed to lower crime and corruption, reduce social problems, lower taxes needed to support prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. Instead, alcohol became more dangerous to consume; organized crime blossomed; courts and prisons systems became overloaded; and endemic corruption of police and public officials occurred. This decade saw the economic boom end by "Black Tuesday" leading to the Great Depression.
It was also a period of the Surrealist and the Art Deco movement, a design aesthetic that inspires Dapper Noir. This period saw the formidable likes of: Salvador Dali, Otto Dix, Marcel Duchamp
Juan Gris, Tamara de Lempicka, René Magritte, Henri Matisse
Joan Miró, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy
The Bauhaus school of design was founded in this decade. The pioneering masters of modern architecture: Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright bust onto the scene in this decade.
Technological advancements in this decade
The first working mechanical television and first colour television was invented by John Logie Baird .
Charles Lindbergh becomes the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean nonstop from New York to Paris, France.
Radio was to the 20’s what mobile technology is to this decade. In 1922: The BBC begins radio broadcasting in the United Kingdom
Record companies introduced an electrical recording process on their phonograph records in 1925 resulting in a more lifelike sound.
The first electric razor was patented by the American manufacturer Col. Jacob Schick.
The first selective Jukeboxes were introduced by the Automated Musical Instrument Company.
Harold Stephen Black revolutionized the field of applied electronics by inventing the negative feedback amplifier.
Clarence Birdseye considered as the founder of the modern frozen food industry invented a process for frozen food.
The following gentlemen shook up the scientific world in the 20s and helped pave the way for modern science.
Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Alexander Fleming, Frederick Banting, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Howard Carter, George Lemaitre, Edwin Powell Hubble and Garrett Morgan
So if you’ve skipped all of the mumbo jumbo, names and information and would like to know the moral of the story, well it is this.
The 20’s were epic.
