How Flappers got their Figure: the 1920s Silhouette

[Music] hello everyone and welcome back today we're going to be talking about the 1920s silhouette now we all have a version of this that easily pops into our head that is the standard look of the flapper very straight no curves usually a very thin and lengthy figure and very youthful they even called it in the time period a boyish figure which does make sense so how did they achieve this because today if that was what was in fashion as it was in the 1990s usually we go to a lot of diet and exercise in order to achieve that and while they did mention that a little bit here and there in the 1920s more often they were saying that really shouldn't be done that is not the most effective way there are better methods for getting these straight figure and that's how they generally refer to it they weren't necessarily saying it needs to be a smaller figure most of the time it was the ideal figure being something that was not curvy so how did they get that figure when literally millions and millions of people subscribed to that fashion to that ideal silhouette in that era but they guaranteed all had very dramatically different bodies some of which you would think would be difficult to achieve that with and i definitely hear that a lot today from people that dress in vintage clothing or do historic costuming i can't do the 1920s my body just won't do it but there had to be a way right so we're going to be looking at the undergarments of the 1920s specifically not just underwear as they saw but also the structural garments that they were using in order to achieve these figures they have an incredibly lengthy list of undergarments that were available during this time because they were going from the 19 teens where corsets were still an option but they were below the bust so bus support was coming into fashion they had lots of different layers though the layers were simplifying the 19 teens garments were overall they did change year by year but overall were very straight and unstructured they didn't have a build out and padding in the same way previous eras had so you couldn't really do really big gathered up petticoats with lots of ruffles plus the corset cover plus the corset and the padding that went underneath it and the chemise and the drawers are just too many layers too much volume to fit under that silhouette so they had already simplified things down they'd already started to combine different garments so that you had one single slip that went over the corset the corset like i said dropped below the bust and was much more unstructured and lighter weight than it had been in previous eras so they had already started us towards that direction and the 1920s just continued this but they didn't get rid of everything from the 19 teens right away because it still gave a fairly similar figure and what they were moving towards meant that they had to come up with a huge variety of different options depending on what the body needed and what the person wanted for their outer garments if you're wearing an evening gown versus a day dress versus doing sports you're going to be needing something different underneath so there's this explosion of different ideas and inventions new techniques and new styles in order to make sure that everyone gets something that works for them so it's a very long list and that's we're going to go through today first before i get into showing you the garments that i made and how the silhouette was achieved with them and admittedly this is a very long list that i have to go through pretty quickly so i don't know about you but before i get into that i think i'm gonna need a little bit of a caffeine boost so thankfully the sponsor of this week's video is commenter commentary is a completely new way of getting your coffee it is flash frozen so it is super fresh and delicious comes in monthly shipments delivered to your door and you get to customize your box so that way you get your roast preference and there are new roasts and brands every single month this means that it is super convenient it only takes a few minutes to make up an amazing cup of coffee or whatever type of drink you want i am making a brown sugar cinnamon iced latte today starting off with a little bit of coconut cream and almond milk for my base adding some of the syrup for flavor some ice cubes and then the capsule i thought in the fridge overnight last night and i'm just pouring that in mixing it up and i'm ready to go these capsules can be made up from frozen using hot water or steamed milk they're so simple and easy to use and can work for so many types of beverages for a very limited time commentary is offering a huge discount of fifty percent off your first order plus free shipping when you order through my link today commenter.com nicole r you definitely don't wanna miss out on this one so thanks again to comment here for sponsoring this week's video and i am uh finally just about ready to get to that long list first off we have the chemise this is sort of a holdover garment from the 19th century they had chemises that went underneath their corsets in that era and this too is meant to be a close to the skin option it is between you and the corset the brazier whatever goes over it it is closest to the body and they cover the torso that is their main goal sometimes these undergarments are made out of plain white cottons or linens but more and more increasingly we're finding silk and rayon and lots of colors and laces and trims and really interesting styles so the chemise is a great example of how literally the same name and the same basic concept of garment changed throughout the years in order to bring us to a very vibrant 1920s point if you want to go a little bit shorter we have the camisole which resembles the corset cover of the previous few decades it tends to end around the waist and be brought into the waist in some format it's not left loose and large it's gathered in or pleated to a band so it's not meant to be quite as large and overarching as some of the previous things in effect i think a lot of the times the camisole was not worn underneath but on top of a lot of garments perfect if say you have a see-through blouse with a suit and you don't necessarily want something that goes the entire length down you just need something underneath that shirt that matches it for the lower half we have a couple basic garments that are pretty common the most common one i found being called a step in more than anything else sometimes it was just step in sometimes it would step in drawers sometimes they refer to them as knickers but step in seems to be one of the most common phrases not just referring specifically to this shorts like garment but also anything that connected between the legs any garment such as a chemise that had snaps or buttons or were stitched together in the crotch region these step ins or sometimes bloomers which are a fuller version much more like we would think a pair of bloomers would be where they're fuller they are banded back to the leg around the knee level both of these lower garments were often paired with things like tunics or camisoles or chemises that went over them and sometimes they were combined so you do have a lot of different ways to refer to these combinations again sometimes they literally word is called combinations because you could combine a camisole to a pair of bloomers and combinations or you could take the concept of the chemise and make it fasten between the legs and we have also an envelope chemise or again step in so there were tons of different terminologies based off of what combination of what you had or what the brand wanted to call it as much as anything else on top of whatever of those you chose to wear as well as the structural garments we're about to get to you also very often had a slip this is sort of bridging the gap between underwear and outerwear because a lot of times it is seen so if a dress is sheer or if it has a particularly low open neckline that gets filled in by a slip that is the appropriate color sometimes made to specifically match a dress for these structural garments we're going to start with the corset of course this i know is something we kind of feel like got left aside there was definitely a very short period that supposedly all the french women just threw off their corsets around 1919 1920 and just never again and then immediately took them back according to all of the articles how much of this is true is really hard to say because these are american newspapers writing about french women as a giant monolith so i have my doubts on whether that actually was overarchingly that common of a thing even then most that had been wearing corsets continued to wear them there wasn't just a sudden tossing off of the corset it was something that began to change and shift in order to do what it needed to do best which for that area was not to nip in the waist because you weren't going for a curvier figure it's to smooth out the body the corset the 19 teens did the same thing there's very little structure very little boning and these they do only go up to the underbust so they are not bust support and they continue usually down past the hip once you reach the hip level you don't have boning and structure in that area it's just fabric so you can sit down easily and still move and function but it's more there for smoothing and that's what continues into the 1920s they just start to add a lot of new technology to it or rather maybe not new technology but a newer use of some older technology such as elastic elastic had been around for a number of decades prior to this but they introduced so much elastic into these corsets which makes sense there are definitely areas that can cut in having worn the 19's corsets before the underbust they can sometimes be a little uh pressure pointy around some of the fleshier areas and kind of uncomfortable so adding an elastic band at the top so the boning stops earlier perfect sense adding elastic to the hips or to the stomach area or to the back in order to make it so someone could flex and move more easily or it has a little bit more compression in certain areas this is something that they started to do on a large scale because people were moving more sports was a huge fashion and these garments need to keep up with that they need to keep up with daily wear and usage and that's what they did by introducing elastic as well as trico so trico is a specific type of knit that is still used in a lot of compression based undergarments today or just in general a lot of stretchy garments it only stretches one direction so that way it is more effective than say something that is all stretch always would be in a corset but the goal was usually very lightweight because you didn't want to add anything to the figure smoothing it out and making sure that it was comfortable and functional so that meant that you might have lacing in the back the sides or the front you might have a busk you might not you might have hooks and eyes or buttons or any number of other types of fastenings and options all around the piece in order to make it more effective that being said the corset still didn't take care of everything and that's why we have the girdle for the most part the difference between a corset and a girdle seems to be the overall height of the garment of course it usually goes up closer to underbust and the girdle stops at the waistline and i definitely found some examples that seem to go against that but i think that's more of a brand based terminology and who their audience is and whether they're more comfortable with the older corset or the newer girdle that might be a reason why we're slowly changing the name on what are basically two very similar garments they're made out of the same sort of structures and concepts they do sometimes even have options for both that are what they call slip-ons where they literally are without any sort of lacing or fastening and they're all elastic they just slip on over the head so they're making sure that they've covered the whole range with both of these garments in terms of lower coverage this of course does nothing for the upper portion of the body the bust needs something else so that is where the brassiere comes in and i've already done an entire video talking about the origination of the brazier which was not a man trying to torture women nor was it a wealthy woman who just took a kerchief and cut it in half there's a lot more to it than that but the brazier was well established by the time that we reach in the 1920s and there is once again a wide range of options for how much support you do or don't want and what shape what fabric what design there's so many options brazier is a really big umbrella term on the less supportive side there are the kerchief style braziers which yes they do literally say you can take a kerchief cut it in half and put some straps on it they will also make these out of fabrics they will also make them with slightly more structure slightly more coverage than that but all of that style have a very minimal support or coverage or really anything to them if you need a little bit more that's where we go towards the bando bandos are bands very simply sometimes they have elastic sometimes they fast with hooks and eyes in the back or the side and these are meant to compress the bust because that is the fashionable look and that's something that they talk about pretty in depth in the era the concern over the potential health problems that might cause because suddenly we're compressing the chest area breathing might become a problem they were really concerned about what compression might mean for the muscles and the fat in that area and what might be the permanent problems that come from compression so yes bandos essentially are binders for the era of course unlike modern binders these don't compress by way of nothing but elastication they are sized to fit snugly you'll also notice the fact that they are longer than just the underbust so that is part of the compression to lower the bust and bring it closer to the body and keeping a smooth line that continues further down than the underbust the bandeau is a very simple basic style but is going to be fairly effective at holding the bust in place where fashion says it should be of course not every brazier is going to match up well with a girdle or a corset sometimes the gap between the two becomes an issue and there are specifically bands that are meant to go around the diaphragm or around the upper portion of the rib area that are meant to through the use of elastic make sure that you don't end up with an uncomfortable muffin topping in that area so there are extra garments that can be layered up in order to make sure that things stay nice and smooth even if the two garments have a bit of a gap between the two your other option of course is to combine these just like we have combinations for all those undergarments before you also have combinations of all of the structural garments as well so the corset brassiere or sometimes the brazier corset was incredibly popular that allowed for a really nice shape because braziers weren't always in a unfitted or unshaped version they do have ones that have seaming that allow for some curves they just seem to be more common with longer format braziers or the corset brazier so that particular garment covers not only the bust but all the way down the waist and usually ends somewhere around the lower hip area and a lot of them have also garter straps meant to hold up the stockings they do also sometimes refer to these as corsalettes i think again that's more of a brand term rather than necessarily a huge difference between the types of garments and i also found quite a few advertisements for three-in-ones which combine the corset the brassiere and also the step in so it does fasten between the legs as well that seems like a much more difficult garment to get in and out of but i suppose that is not terribly different than our modern shapewear in many ways so depending on what sort of coverage support you needed how you needed things to fasten and where you needed them to fasten how you needed things to be accessible whether you were going for maximum support and smoothing or you wanted something you could move in or if you wanted something that was lightweight breezy and simple for summer wear whatever it is all of those options existed and i think that's the really important thing to get into next is how do these actually look different on a body because i honestly do not have the ideal 1920s flapper body i'm not super curvy but my finger is not super straight either so what i'm going to be doing is making three different sets i'm going to start off with the least structure possible with that sort of kerchief style brazier and a pair of step-ins put a slip over that and a dress and we will see how it layers up and how that looks for the figure then i'm going to take it one step further i have made an envelope chemise or a step in chemise and a bando style brazier so you can see what sort of figure shaping that gives on top and the last one is going to be the corset brassiere so we'll see what a more extreme version of structure looks like this is by no means the strongest sturdiest most supportive version of this garment i went with sort of a really common style that i found a lot of advertisement showing but still show a very effective difference of what the final silhouette looks like to start with the kerchief or really triangle bra it's going to be a silk shore mousse very lightweight most of the ones i saw were silk crepes silks or mousse even net just very lightweight this is not gonna honestly provide much support or structure i'm decorating these center front edges with a little bit of lace not necessary but a nice fun touch since the lace is rather uneven edges i am basting it down first zigzagging near the edge and then i will trim back the silk so that way just the lace is exposed along that edge the nice thing is about the triangle shape is that i'm able to have both the center front and sort of side front edges on straight grains so i don't have to worry about stretching there too much same thing goes the lace it will have a little bit of stretch and give but not too much along that center front edge so just trimming back as closely as i comfortably can to the zigzag that will keep it from fraying only leaving about eight of an inch quarter of an inch roughly around and then i'm able to go in and put in the dart and the side edges are then folded back twice and top stitched this goes all the way up to the top where the lace finishes then i'm able to connect the right and the left this is done by overlapping them and then sort of tucking those edges the corners back under and top stitching so it could also be done with a center front seam but the sort of overlap style i thought looked really nice for the underside i'm folding it towards the outside so that way it gets finished nicely as well the bottom i'm binding in this case about a one and a half inch strip will get folded over a couple of times and stitch later then it's time to do all the really long very narrow straps first i have to make up a very tiny tiny tube that's going to be the button loop for the ends of the straps because this is going to wrap all the way around the under bust and button back in front so i am stitching that inside of the very long tubes that are going to go around the underbust and then i'm adding a little bit of elastic it's not going the whole way it's only about five or six inches and i'm stitching that to the seam allowance because it's going to be inside of the tube and i don't want to have to have that edge fold over along with the seam allowance turn the tube right side out sort of mush the fabric up over the elastic until it has as much fabric as it needs in order to stretch fully and then tack down the other end of the elastic inside of the tube then i can get to actually stitching all of these tubes on finishing that bottom binding on the bra the bottom edge will need to be hand stitched in order to fold over properly and that's why i'm not having the tube be one tube the whole way around as you'll see i'm also going ahead and adding those little buttons right where the darts are at the bottom like i said that's where the strap will reattach and now i can insert the tiny tube into the binding that i did for those front pieces stitch back and forth a couple of times add a little bit more of that quarter inch strapping to the top of the triangle to work your shoulder straps the ends of these shoulder straps will go to the back and just fold over and be stitched like a loop so they can go back and forth depending on how you open you need that back and where it feels comfortable for you so those don't have to get stitched down like i said that loop will just come around and fasten to the button in front after passing and crossing the whole way around the back for the bandeau bra i'm using a rayon satin which is pretty stiff it's just a really simple rectangle along with two trapezoid shapes at the ends that we are pleating the rectangle down to they're about four inches or so at that pleated section but the height is going to depend on what's comfortable for your body this is going to be made to fit my bust size pretty much exactly with only slight compression and i'm just going ahead and stitching up the very ends with a little bit of facing as well because that's where i'm going to put the hooks and eyes before i can even try it on i'm using hook and eye tape for this but you can hand stitch on hooks and eyes or stitch them to a tape i do recommend if you're hand stitching them you put extra reinforcement such as a tape there they're just stitched on the one side right now because i want to try it on and make sure it fits first after trying it on i realized i need a little bit of curve in that rectangle in front it's not going to be straight on the sides otherwise it gaps on top and gaps a lot on the bottom supposed to a little bit but this was too much so i took out about half an inch on top and about an inch on the bottom just curved the ends of that rectangle and repleted it then it's time to finish up all those raw edges i'm just taking some tape that i made out of the same fabric because it's a good light weight anything in a mid weight which is stiffer will do i didn't cut these on the bias because they didn't need to be there's not a lot of curves but you could definitely use bias tape here as well and that's just going over all of the folded raw edges in order to finish them off on the seams along the top of the bottom and then the shoulder straps which are just satin ribbons cut on an angle so they don't fray and tacked down that makes them pretty easy to adjust if you need to which is true of the era since they are selling these in mass production situations as well i also tacked down the ends of those hooks and eyes along the top and the bottom so that way it didn't flip out when i fastened it for the corset brassiere i am using a very lightweight coattail but again any stiffer fabric they use satin or taffeta cottons of different types anything that's going to hold up and have some resistance doesn't need to be as sturdy as could do this is an interesting shape of garments got a fair amount of curve to it the front has three pieces and the back has three pieces and it fastens over the left side i am in this case adding a little bit of elastic to some of those side seams so i'm not going to stitch up the side seams just yet in fact it's complicated but for the front seams i'm just folding them over twice and top stitching them down i trimmed one of them back so it wasn't too bulky and now it's time to insert the elastic panels that start just above the waist and go down to over the hip i'm using a fairly wide elastic for this and right now i'm just stitching the elastic seamed in i'm not finishing it in any way because i want to try it on first you will notice if i'm stitching it into the side seams that's going to be a problem with the fastening it gets a little complicated here to start with my initial thought was just to use the hook and eye tape that i got stitch a narrow panel of the coat teal down the whole seam and then stitch the eye tape to that little panel sticking out sort of like a facing i end up changing this later as you'll see for the hooks however that does stay the same i go ahead and hook those in and then fold back and press the seam allowance which i left a fair bit of extra for the front lay it down over so it lines up correctly and then pin that to make sure that it is evenly spaced back from the edge this is where i realize my problem it's going to just be too far back from the edge but i am going ahead and stitching down those hooks for the fitting for right now with the fitting it fit well except for the fact that the back waist wasn't high enough for me i know i have a really high hip and back and that's constantly a problem that's why i get a wrinkle there my options were to either cut a completely new back panel or to add elastic there so i decided to go with the elastic option just to see what happened and i cut off just above where the wrinkles were so that way i wasn't putting a lot of bulk in an uncomfortable place and added elastic to that back panel instead for these new side seams with the fastening what i did was i actually stitched the eye tape on and folded it over that panel that i had before is also stitched so that way the elastic and the back panel were sort of sandwiched between the facing and the eye tape it is a little bulky but it still works i folded them towards each other folded over the edges and top stitched and went ahead and folded under the bottom section at the hem as well because i won't have a binding there to cover that up i do also in doing the hook and eye tape like this i have to remove the extra hooks and eyes from the ends because there's not quite enough spacing down at the ends for me to do that without losing a hook every single time then it's time to do all of the internal finishing trimming back the seam allowances to only a quarter of an inch so that way i can just like we did with the bandeau bra use a folded tape and cover up all of those seam allowances for the back this allows me to finish off the whole way up that back seam and for the sides where the elastic gusset is i'm able to stitch half of the way up with binding on one side and leave a little bit of the tail then the other side will completely cover it up so it's just kind of a y shape inside one of the nice things is that because this is all internalized you can use a lighter weight fabric that isn't the same outer fabric that you use so i just used a bias cut strip of cotton satin that way i'm not having to bias cut into coat teal which would be pretty thick pretty heavy and honestly a bit wasteful bias cut is not the most practical thing but if you're doing it with the constantine it's great and gets around all those weird curves for the garters at the bottom in order to attach the garters i just have a wide strip of a lightweight elastic it's not quite the same stuff they used but it'll work and that just gets stitched to the bottom of those garters and the little clips hook on so that finishes off all of my edges finishes off adding the little garter clips down at the bottom and the straps are same as before just a little bit of satin ribbon that is tacked along the edges [Music] so starting off with the comparisons i have a very lightweight black silk dress that i don't have any supportive garments underneath right now you can definitely see my natural shape i do want to note as we start going through i am not a compressive person when it comes to my chest so any change is going to be pretty monumental next up i have my slip which is a heavier satin this is going to be used as an example as well so this is the slip underneath the dress so that offers a little bit of smoothing underneath the dress not a lot but a slip is still a good idea so comparing the two examples here you can see that it has flattened out the chest just a little bit but hasn't really done too much next up we have the triangle brassiere and the pair of step ends there is definitely like i said not a lot of support not a ton of coverage uh definitely no shaping here and so that's what this looks like underneath the gown without the slip again it looks pretty much like my natural shape there's not much happening here and comparing all three we can see that there is a little bit of a difference but really not much honestly that slip does more so moving on then to the bandeau style which does have a fair bit of compression it compresses me maybe about half an inch to an inch it's more that it's pushing things downwards necessarily inwards and it doesn't cut back under the chest so it's going to create a bit of a curtain effect in the front to help smooth out that front line so this is what that looks like by itself under the dress definitely seeing a difference now this is a little bit compressive does mean it's a little bit supportive but not like our modern bra since it's pushing the comparison between the four you can start to really see the difference when it comes to where the chest is sitting how high how far out and how smooth it is compared to the waist last option is the corset brassiere i did find you have to start at the bottom and work your way up in order to fasten this it is not the easiest honestly i think i will have somebody help me with this in the future but you can see here already how much of a difference this is going to make not just to the bust but the whole way down the front it is incredibly flat in front and honestly if i had patterned it a little bit better this is my first try it probably floundered down the back as well underneath the dress by itself we have no chest there is nothing it is just a flat front the back doesn't look too bad either it doesn't really straighten anything out but wow when you start to compare the five together you can really see the difference in the last two with the bandeau bra and the corset brassiere the corset brazier in particular completely straight down the front from my chest all the way down to the girders holding up my stockings great tension this is definitely the option i'm going to go for if i need that flapper figure and of course just for added comparison because inevitably you would be wearing a slip under something like this this is a comparison of the slip with all three of the different braziers so you can see the flapper figure is definitely something that you can achieve even if like me you have a chest that is not flabber-sized you might be able to get a lot more compression out of these garments than i was able to but the flapper figure definitely feels a lot more achievable at this point [Music]

Channel: Nicole Rudolph

Views: 258,436

Keywords: nicole rudolph, fashion history, history myths, weird history, explainer videos, fashion analysis, fashion evolution, busting myths, historical fashion, historical costuming

Id: LNiweGnkQ8E

Length: 31min 10sec (1870 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 10 2022