Remember that 1920s encompasses a decade which is a long time in fashion, so there is not just one definitive look. At the beginning of the 20s, women were moving from their confined Edwardian corsets to rejecting them completely with their “dropped waist” dresses.

But by the end of the 1920s, the waist became popular again as women enjoyed their curves.

Take a look at these glamorous wedding dresses in France which were published on Les Modes (Paris) from between the 1920s and 1930s.

See more images via vintage everyday: 42 Glamorous Wedding Dresses from the 1920s and 1930s.

Do you remember the ultra funky platform shoes that were all the rage in the 1970s?

After their use in Ancient Greece for raising the height of important characters in the Greek theatre and their similar use by high-born prostitutes or courtesans in Venice in the 16th Century, platform shoes are thought to have been worn in Europe in the 18th century to avoid the muck of urban streets.

During the Qing dynasty, aristocrat Manchu women wore a form of platform shoe similar to 16th century Venetian chopine.

Platform shoes enjoyed some popularity in the United States, Europe and the UK in the 1930s, 1940s, and very early 1950s, but not nearly to the extent of their popularity in the 1970s and 1980s.

When the biggest, and most prolonged, platform shoe fad in U.S. history began at least as early as 1970 (appearing in both advertisements and articles in 1970 issues of Seventeen magazine), and continued through the late-1980s though not in Europe or the UK where they had all but died out by 1979.

At the beginning of the fad, they were worn primarily by young women in their teens and twenties, and occasionally by younger girls, older women, and (particularly during the disco era) by young men, and although they did provide added height without nearly the discomfort of spike heels, they seem to have been worn primarily for the sake of attracting attention.

Many glam rock musicians wore platform shoes as part of their act.

While a wide variety of styles were popular during this period, including boots, espadrilles, oxfords, sneakers, and both dressy and casual sandals of all description, with soles made of wood, cork, or synthetic materials, the most popular style of the early 1970s was a simple quarter-strap sandal with light tan water buffalo-hide straps (which darkened with age), on a beige suede-wrapped cork wedge-heel platform sole.

These were originally introduced under the brand name, “Kork-Ease.”

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 Actor Jetta Goudal wearing a satin gown by Lanvin, from Vogue, November 1923.

Shooting for Vogue and Vanity Fair in the 20s and 30s, father of fashion photography Edward Steichen devised a mode of portraiture that still sets the template for style magazines today.

 Actor Mary Heberden in 1935, published in Vogue.

Model Mario Morehouse and unidentified model wearing dresses by Vionnet, first seen in Vogue, October 1930.

 Actor Joan Bennett in 1928, from Vanity Fair.

Read on via Fashion forward: Edward Steichen’s trailblazing Vogue photographs – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian.

These photos depict a very common style of the 1950s in glamour photography.

There were however no modelling agencies and this made it difficult in terms of finding professionals.

Most of the support staff of make up crews, lighting, costume and props was also missing.

Most of the photographers worked with women who were willing to have their photo taken, in many cases models were asked if they would have their photo taken off the street.

Then there was no question of having a location chosen or a costume selected. Everything was done extempore.

See more Images via vintage everyday: Glamour Photography in the 1950s.

The prize-winning coiffures in a contest in Munich, Germany on 1 May, 1964.

They were designed for evening wear and hairdressers at the time said that anyone with a little time could copy them.

Image Credit: Photograph by AP Photo

Source: 1964: The World 50 Years Ago – The Atlantic

Teddy boys:

With a streetwise 1950s blend of Edwardian dandyism, Saville Row fashion and styles borrowed from Hollywood westerns, teddy boys were Britain’s first identifiable youth tribe.

Photograph: Joseph McKeown/Getty Images

Ever since teddy boys started stalking the streets of Britain with their dandy looks, teen scenes have come thick and fast.

A new book documents them all: mods and rockers, punks and ravers • Street Culture by Gavin Baddeley.

Mods: The Who, posing on Brighton pier in mod revival style

Bikers from Movies: Peter Fonda in Easy Rider.

Hippies and the Summers of Love.

via From hippies to hip-hop heads: 50 years of style tribes – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian.

Zoe, Mrs Mary, Marjorie and Chloe Gullick, outside Altoncourt, Killara (ca. 1909). Zoe, Marjorie and Chloe are wearing wide-brimmed sun hats, a look which Margot Riley says Australians pioneered.  

ALARMINGLY, WHEN I ASK historian Margot Riley what Australians have contributed to fashion, she immediately brings up a classic combination – the safari suit and long socks.

“I think that was pretty uniquely Australian,” Margot says dryly. Thankfully, she moves on and lists a few other Aussie fashion innovations.

Eleanor Elizabeth Stephen (ca. 1855) sits in a lovely crinoline dress. She is likely attached to a steel rod at her neck to hold her still for the photo. “People think why are they looking so serious, but it’s quite difficult to hold a smile still for the length of time required. It could be up to minute in these early days,” says dress historian Margot Riley

“In the 19th century there were quite a lot that were designed to deal with climatic condition…the wearing of sunhats in town and light-weight silk coats in summer.

And then of course now you get wonderful local designers who are responding to the local environment, people like Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee.

I think that sort of bush couture aesthetic that they developed in the 1970s and ’80s was a very important shift trying to create and independent unique look that tried to set Australia apart.”

 Opera singer Madame Carandini and her three daughters (ca. 1876) in the era when it became fashionable to collect photos of public figures. 

For those that don’t know of them already, Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee are cut from the same cloth, producing patterned and quilted clothing in bright eye-assailing colours.

In our settler days, however, Australian fashion was regularly hijacked as a more subtle disguise.

“In Europe there was a very strong code about what was worn, by whom and doing what, and people knew that and they were very sophisticated in reading a crowd,” Margot says.

“[Early Australians] could change their look when they came to Australia…and they took advantage of distance and poor communication to reinvent themselves.”

Valma Ashcroft (later Burrows, at left), one of Australia’s earliest paid fashion models, and another model in Australian fashion outside the Minerva French Perfumery, Kings Cross, 1941.  

Once they’d made something of themselves early convict emancipists were not shy about flashing their wealth around either. “There’s always comments made about how flashily they dressed,” says Margot. “Australians had a very vibrant workforce here; labour was in demand so the working man probably had more disposable income than in many other countries in the 19th century and the fashions reflect that.”

See more Images via Australia’s fashion history – Australian Geographic.

From the moment Audrey Hepburn stepped out of a yellow taxi cab and stared whimsically into Tiffany & Co’s window in this gorgeous Givenchy creation, our love affair with the LBD (little black dress) began.

Audrey Hepburn and Givenchy met and collaborated on the set of Sabrina in 1954, and a life-long professional and personal partnership was ignited.

‘It was a kind of marriage’, Givenchy would later tell the Telegraph.

There was nothing ‘little’ about this LBD – it set a new style standard in Hollywood in direct opposition to Dior’s ‘new look’.

A modern icon was born.

Read more at http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/544119/iconic-fashion-moments-in-film.html#Z7L1QxAke6FdqtUs.99

Havana at dusk by Alice Hawkins.

Cuba is a fairytale place. I like that you can just stay in people’s houses or wander into someone’s home and eat with a family.

My last trip there was for a fashion shoot with Love magazine in 2012. We had so many clothes that the stylist had to stay over the road from me with this glamorous single mum called Lily and her son Richard.

We put her in a Versace outfit and she just owned it.

She knew exactly what she was doing. My work is influenced by 18th-century portraiture, which is why they are both posing in a formal manner.

This was taken just around the corner from Lily’s house. I had seen an art deco building that looked beautiful – all we had to do was wait for the sun to go down.

Although it is not a shot of a sunset, you can sense that’s what’s happening from the way the buildings are all lit up in different colours.

Source: My best summer photograph: sand, scorpions and sausage sarnies | Art and design | The Guardian

Julianne Moore as the Greek goddess Hera, by Karl Lagerfeld for the 2011 Pirelli calendar. Photograph: Karl Lagerfeld/Pirelli

The publication to which these giants of modern style refer? A soft-porn calendar promoting tyres.

The extent to which the Pirelli calendar has been embraced by the fashion industry has been unavoidable, in the wake of 50th-anniversary gala celebrations held in a modern art gallery in Milan and attended by top-flight models, photographers, stylists and designers, and the publication of a new coffee-table book celebrating the half century.

The fashion industry, normally intensely snobbish about distancing itself from the fake-tanned, fake-boobed world of commercialised glamour modelling, has nonetheless taken the Pirelli calendar to its heart. (Or perhaps, more accurately, to its bosom.)

Pirelli’s triumph is a masterclass in image management, one that leverages basic instincts in a sophisticated marketplace.

Its power lies in the fact that being acknowledged as sexually attractive is a valuable asset to women in the public eye, whereas being seen as sexually available is demeaning.

So the deal Pirelli strikes with photographers and models is that they get to be sexy, and Pirelli gets to be classy.

A key part of the Pirelli legend is that the calendar is not available to purchase, but sent to a secret list of high-rollers and international public figures.

This exclusivity is now entirely academic – the images are widely published on the internet – but it sets a context no less powerful for being imaginary.

French model Laetitia Casta, by Annie Leibovitz for the 2000 Pirelli calendar. Photograph: Annie Leibovitz/Pirelli

At its worst, the Pirelli calendar gives free rein to fashion’s ickiest side.

The 2010 calendar, shot by Terry Richardson, is all squeakily waxed young women with Richardson’s signature pool-party slicked-back hair, eating bananas or pretending to lick cockerels. (Seriously.)

But Pirelli has been very smart about playing up its illustrious roll call of photographers, from Helmut Newton to Annie Leibovitz, and about balancing the unreconstructed salaciousness of Richardson with artier issues.

Read on via Pirelli calendar at 50: how a soft-porn institution promoting tyres won the hearts of the fashion industry | Fashion | The Guardian.

Oxfordshire hosts something called the Henley Royal Regatta—“one of the quintessential British events of the summer season,” according to WWD.

Apparently it’s quite an occasion and has happened annually since 1839.

Consequently, old photos are an absolute treasure trove of bygone ladies’ fashions.

Boaters en route to the regatta, 1886.

Lady, sit down in that boat or you’re gonna topple us all into the drink:

Some Classic, Corseted Regatta Fashions from Days Gone By

Here’s a colorised glimpse:

via Some Classic, Corseted Regatta Fashions from Days Gone By.

Ugg boots were first created by Australian farmers, who used sheepskin to stay warm. As the years went by, many Australian surfers also cottoned on to using them for their warmth-giving properties.

Although popular in America, most Australians consider them too dowdy to be worn outside the house. So how did they get the reputation for being fashionable in the United States?

When the boots landed on American shores, a company named Decker decided to copyright them, and after a marketing blitz in which some celebrities endorsed the product, they became a runaway hit.

Decker got greedy, and quickly started trying to shut down Australian manufacturers of ugg boots, for using the now-trademarked name.

To the Australian manufacturers the claim was ludicrous, as they had been selling the boots for many years already.

The Australian manufacturers took their claim to court, explaining that “ugg” was actually just a slang word for “ugly,” and thus the trademark was invalid.

Fortunately for the Australians, the court sided with them.

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Berlin, 1928

Immortalized in movies and magazine covers, young women’s fashion of the 1920s was both a trend and social statement, a breaking-off from the rigid Victorian way of life.

These young, rebellious, middle-class women, labeled ‘flappers’ by older generations, did away with the corset and donned slinky knee-length dresses, which exposed their legs and arms.

Tamara de Lempicka, Paris 1929. Photo by Dora Kallmus.

The hairstyle of the decade was a chin-length bob, of with several popular variations.

1920’s Cocktails

See more Images via vintage everyday: Women’s Street Fashion of the 1920s.

Alfred Cheney Johnston (known as “Cheney” to his friends and associates) (April 8, 1885 – April 17, 1971) was a New York City-based photographer known for his portraits of Ziegfeld Follies showgirls as well as of 1920s-30s actors and actresses.

Featuring the photographs of lovely, anonymous Ziegfeld Girls by Alfred Cheney Johnston, taken from the 1910s thru the 1940s.

See more images via vintage everyday: Ziegfeld Girls from 1910-40s by Alfred Cheney Johnston

Joni Mitchell
, 1972:

The poster girl of hippie chic, Joni Mitchell was undoubtedly one of the Seventies’ ultimate style icons.

She wore tie dye blouses, earth-goddess hair and billowing kaftans like no other, usually completing her trademark look with bare feet and a guitar in hand.

All together now, ‘Don’t it always seem to go…’

Cher, 1973

Cher released a whopping 10 albums in the 1970s meaning, quite simply, that she was absolutely everywhere.

From more-is-more prints to epic perms, she trialled every trend the decade had to offer with gusto.

Read on via vintage everyday: 22 Style Moments That Defined the 1970s

In the gloaming … Amber Valletta on the Tiber. Photograph: Glen Luchford

by Nell Frizzell

We had to shut the river Tiber in Rome for this picture. It’s expensive to shut down a whole river, but this was for the Prada 1997 autumn/winter campaign, so we had the budget for it.

You can’t see them, but there are about 10 people in the water, setting fire to bales of hay covered in kerosene to try and make it look misty. We had to shoot it in the last 10 minutes of daylight, so that the colours would be just right.

I wanted it to be more than dusk – you could call it the gloaming.We’d painted the boat the right colour. Everyone was lined up, ready to go, about four hours before we were due to shoot. But right at the last minute, the stylist decided to change the dress to a red one. That proved too vibrant.

Then the boat started to sink and one of the guys throwing the bales of hay in the river forgot to let go and disappeared into the water after it.

I’d been planning it for three months but in the last five minutes of daylight, the entire scene descended into utter chaos.

Mr Bertelli, the boss of Prada, was standing there on the riverbank shouting at everyone. When he asked me if I’d got the shot I said, “No!” and stormed off in a huff.

We went back the next day. We closed the river again and worked on everything we’d done wrong to get it right the second time around. When the film was developed it was exactly what I had wanted to achieve.

Source: Glen Luchford’s best photograph: Amber Valletta modelling Prada in a sinking boat | Art and design | The Guardian

Women’s Fashion of Edwardian Era: The Period of the Gowns

Photographic portraits of Edwardian women’s fashion demonstrates a simplification in fashion from the Victorian era.

However, there was more creativity and innovation, especially with gowns.

These glamorous photos of women in their gowns from the 1900s will prove this.

Source: Women’s Fashion of Edwardian Era: The Period of the Gowns ~ vintage everyday

Fabulous Fashion Photographs from Vogue Taken by Clifford Coffin from Between the 1940s and 1950s.

American photographer Clifford Coffin (1913-1972) is considered by many who knew him as the greatest of Vogue’s “lost” photographers – an artist far ahead of his time.

His innovative and intriguing fashion photographs of the 1940s and 1950s for such renowned magazines as Glamour, Vogue and Jardin des Modes in New York, London and Paris challenged the standards of the day

See more Photos via vintage everyday: Fabulous Fashion Photographs from Vogue Taken by Clifford Coffin from Between the 1940s and 1950s

Erwin Blumenfeld (1897 – 1969) is regarded as one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century.

In the 1940s and 1950s he became famous for his fashion photography, working for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and also for artistic nude photography.

“Day and night I try, in my studio with its six two-thousand watt suns, balancing between the extremes of the impossible, to shake loose the real from the unreal, to give visions body, to penetrate into unknown transparencies.”

Erwin Blumenfeld.

More terrific Images via vintage everyday: Amazing Fashion Photography from the 1940s and 1950s by Erwin Blumenfeld.

At the turn of the twentieth century, it was all about Evelyn, Camille, and Irene, the original “Gibson Girls” and the models for the drawings that changed the way America thought about women.

Though the 1890s may seem buttoned up by modern standards, they were anything but. Independent, well-read, and urbane, a new class of woman was emerging in America’s cities.

This “New Woman” did not care to be chaperoned in public. She was athletic and free-spirited. Above all, she was educated, taking advantage of new access to secondary school and college.

Photo: Evelyn Gibson (Getty Images).

She was also scary. By the 1890s, the reform fervor of suffragists and their sisters had ceased to be cute and started to be all too real.

The status quo was being challenged by Progressive politics, new divorce laws, and women who chose to work outside the home.

Charles Dana Gibson, a popular illustrator, looked down on reform zeal in women.

And so he created “the Gibson girl,” a catch-all representation of a kinder, gentler New Woman—one who rode bikes, wore casual clothing, and flaunted her attitude, but was above all beautiful and anonymous.

By the 1910s, to visit Gibson’s office was to push your way through hundreds of gorgeous models with big hair and small waists, each vying for a go as one of Gibson’s girls.

Now read on via The Gibson Girls: The Kardashians of the Early 1900s | Mental Floss.