Top Fashion Trends of the 1920s

The top fashion trends of the 1920s influenced society in many ways. For the first time a "look" was available to the masses. 

These trends were influenced by the rich, social "elite" who had money to burn and lived close to the fashion centers of the world. Urban centers like New York and Paris influenced fashion, and fashion became the calling card of beauty, "sophistication," and affluence. 

1920s Fashion Model and Sex Symbol: Muriel Finley1920s Fashion Model and Sex Symbol: Muriel Finley

The Sexual Revolution of the 1920s


The top fashion trends of the Victorian Age dressed women in bodices, crinolines and corsets. Accentuating a woman's breasts and ass while crushing the waist within a frame of "masculine" control as Joshua Zietz writes in Flapper.


Sex & Fashion?

1920s fashion, in contrast, with the loose fitting waist lines, short hemlines, and simple breathable fabrics, reflects an easing up of the male domination of the female look.


The top fashions reflect this quiet sexual revolution. 

Designers like Paul Poiret, the self-proclaimed, "King of Fashion," was a Parisian of refined style and taste, though you'd never know it from his inflated sense of ego and self (o.k. maybe you would).

Poiret lived and breathed fashion and with his elegant designs he set forth to change the way the "modern woman" was seen in society.

It's said Poiret "waged war" on the corset because of the way it divided a woman's body into two halves.

Clara Bow: The Clara Bow: The "It" Girl of the 1920s

Exotic Styles



Luxury was in season.


Short Hemlines

Another calling card of the top fashion styles of the 1920s were the rising hemlines of a woman's dress that progressively got shorter and shorter as the decade went on. Finally reaching just above the knee in 1925 and staying there. 

Coco Chanel

It would be hard to talk about the top fashions of the 1920s without mentioning Coco Chanel. As we've covered, she made a name for herself selling clothes for women that blurred the line between the "look" or "style" of man and woman.

Sexy Flapper in Retro 1920s FashionSexy Flapper in Retro 1920s Fashion

The flapper fashions that were heavily influenced by Chanel's early designs set the stage for the entire flapper movement in America and worldwide. 
