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1930s Film Clips
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| Vogue - July 1939 |
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•Click here to see a beautifully photographed article about the fashionable hats of 1947•
Edith Head on Paris Frocks (Photoplay, 1938)
A telegraph from Hollywood costume designer Edith Head (1897 – 1981) to the editorial offices of PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE listing various highlights of the 1938 Paris fashion scene. Not surprisingly, it reads like a telegram:
"Paris says: Long waistlines, short flared skirts, fitted bodices, tweeds combines with velvet, warm colors..."
"Hair up in pompadours piles of curls and fringe bangs."
"Braid and embroidery galore lace and ribbon trimmings loads of jewelry mostly massive."
"Skirts here short and not too many pleats more slim skirts with slight flare."
The great Hollywood modiste wrote in this Tarzan-english for half a page, but by the end one is able to envision the feminine Paris of the late Thirties.
Recommended Reading: Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood's Greatest Costume Designer . Click here to read about physical perfection during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
| Sunglasses Make Their Mark in the Fashion World (Click Magazine, 1939)
Although sunglasses had slowly inched their way forward in popularity since the late Twenties, the attached article declared that by 1939 sunglasses were officially recognized as a full-fledged fashion accessory when the Hollywood stars Joan Bennet and Hedy Lamar began to sport them around town.Like T-shirts and khaki pants, it would be W.W. II that would provide sunglasses with a guaranteed spot on fashion stage for the next sixty-five years.
Click here to read about the introduction of the T shirt to the world of fashion.
| Beating the Beach Censor (Click Magazine, 1939)
A convertible swimsuit from 1939...*Watch a 1946 Film-Clip About the First Bikini Swimsuits*
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| The Fashion Industry Bumps into Hollywood (Click Magazine, 1938)
This is an historic article that introduced the fashion era that we still reside in today. The attached article from 1938 heralded a new day in the fashion industry where fashion magazines would no longer be relied upon to set the trends in clothing; henceforth, that roll would only be played by movie actresses in far-off Hollywood:"The greatest fashion influence in America, stylists sadly lament, is the much-photographed, much-glamorized and much-imitated Movie Queen. What she wears is news, eagerly copied, by girls all over the country who want to look like Joan Crawford and Myrna Loy." The primary bone of contention that the East Coast fashionistas found most objectionable was the fact that movie stars are Californians, and Californians will always prefer comfort over glamor. It was Hollywood movie stars who introduced sunglasses to the world of fashion...
| Was Tobé the First Fashion Stylist?
A 1937 magazine article from the long forgotten pages of DELINEATOR MAGAZINE insisted that they found the very first fashion stylist -some lass named Tobé (born Taubé Coller, a.k.a. Mrs Herbert Davis, 1890 - 1962). They were very insistent on the matter, although they failed to explain the sources used to reach this conclusion: "This woman is the first official stylist...Now she is head of Tobé Incorporated, through which she does for more than a hundred stores in America and some in Canada, England, Australia, Norway and Sweden." "Tobé isn't an oracle, she isn't a designer; she simply knows from experience, better than anyone else, what styles you are going to like best and what will be most useful to you. From the great fashion salons of Paris, from tailored England, from America, she culls the newest and best of the season's creations."
Further Reading: "She Knows What Women will Wear"
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, June 1959.
| The New Glamour of Velvet (Literary Digest, 1936)
A 1930s fashion article which perfectly encapsulated some of the heady excitement that filled the air when "a new crush-resistant, non-wrinkling, packable, ultra-fashionable velvet" hit the market. The material was immediately swooped-up by the glam squad in far-off Hollywood; RKO chief costume designer Walter Plunkett pontificated:"Velvet is the epitome and symbol of elegance." Not one to be upstaged, Travis Banton (1894 – 1958) Plunckett's counterpart at Paramount Studios, chimed in declaring: "The flattery and refinement of velvet is supplied by no other material." Anticipating the Springtime coronation of Edward VIII, thousands of yards of velvet had been manufactured for the occasion.
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