Vogue, 1922

The first two pages I looked at in the July 1, 1922 edition of Vogue, the “Hot Weather Fashions Number,” were advertisements for hosiery. Right away I am swept into a different time and place. Wearing hose does not make one elegant here in 2011. Women like to show off their legs, not hide them. However, when I think about it the older a woman is the more likely you will be to find her wearing hose. My grandmothers wear hose. They were brought up in a time when it was lady-like.

The vacation ads I came across advertised similar things: beautiful beaches, golf, yachts, cruises, horseback riding, and good food. These are all activities people want in a vacation today. Yet the feel of the ads was different than what I feel when I view ads for Carnival Cruise lines. The 1922 ads seemed to emphasis relaxation, lounging, and doing absolutely nothing. Vacations today seem more focused on doing physical activities like snorkeling, hiking, or paragliding. From these ads it appears that the 20s were a much slower time then today.

About ten pages at the front of the magazine were covered in blurbs about different schools ranging from military academies to schools for girls. I’m not really familiar with the school systems of the time, but my guess is that education was gaining ground, importance, and increasing in variety. I really doubt I would find anything about a university in an issue of Vogue this year.

Flipping through the section about summer fashion I noticed two things. One, none of the models wore anything shorter than their calf line, and two, they all wore skirts. I guess this doesn’t really surprise me. Back then women were more feminine, fragile, proper, and sophisticated. They dressed more delicately. Today the focus is more on being sexy, fierce, and independent.
I also noticed that all the models and drawn figures had short haircuts that didn’t pass the chin line. Many women had soft curls or wore large floppy hats. There was also no emphasis on accentuating a woman’s chest. In fact, there seemed to be more of a focus on the lack of breasts than on the presence of them. Both of these characteristics of “modern beauty” are completely opposite of what women strive for today. Long hair and push-up bras are the fashion. However, it is true that popular fashions from previous decades are creeping back into today’s favored styles of dress. It makes me wonder, how long until the 1920s influence our wardrobes?

One article I found particularly interesting was titled “Vogue Essays on Etiquette.” It discussed how young women of the day were acting more scandalous then the previous generation. The article made a point that still applies today: “Of course, each new ‘younger set’ does things which the past younger set did not do, and the elders of both, perhaps, hold up their hands in holy horror” (pg 43). No matter what decade or century a person grows up in, the younger generation will commit outrageous acts of independence against what is considered the norm or appropriate behavior. Today, mothers are horrified when their daughters start walking out the door in a skin-tight skirt that barely covers their butt and a shirt that looks more like a bra. In 1922, “a young person of bold, self-assertive manners, with a painted face, ballet-length skirt, and bare back” is tsk-ed at by older generations. The main goal of the article was balance and peace between the generations; a goal society is constantly searching for. “Vogue seeks…to adjust the delicate balance between what the older generation must yield to inevitable change and what reckless youth must, in its own interests, leave to the judgment of more mature minds.” One final amusement I found in this article was the description of cars as “motors” and how they were responsible for a great deal of liberty for the youth. Technology seems to be ever-increasing what scandals young people can get into.

My favorite article was “Handkerchiefs a Lady Loses.” It outlined the best type of handkerchiefs to drop in certain places for the best results. The whole thing seemed so silly to me. I got a good laugh out of it.

There were several articles about gardens and furniture and maintaining a household. It surprised me how long the articles were and how small the font was. For me, this did not read as a magazine but more of a how-to book. There was so much detail and advice that it was hard to read through entire articles without getting bored or uninterested. I did not want to spend ten minutes reading one article. Did women in 1922 have more free time? They must have, and more patience, to get through an entire issue of Vogue. In fact, I even came across a paragraph that refers to the magazine as a book. That seems a much more apt description, a picture book. It was exhausting to get through, but an interesting experience.