1930s Fashion – The Definitive Sourcebook
Long overdue and very welcome comes this visual treat for all 1930s fashion fans out there. If you are not yet sold on the glamor
and Art deco resplendence that was 1930s style, then this book will give you an epiphany! Published by Goodman Feill for £30 – it’s available from Carlton Books
Decade by decade, each of the nearly 600 pages
is packed with gorgeous imagery, fashion plates, photographs and descriptions of popular couture in day wear, outdoor wear, evening wear, swimwear and much more.
Edited by fashion and design historians Charlotte Fiell and Emmanuelle Direx, these ladies strive successfully to convince the reader that
the 1930s is a decade far too long overlooked as some sort of bridge between the the wild flapper era of the 1920s and the 1940s fashions of the war years.
The 1930s truly represent the coming of age for women’s glamour. Figure hugging gowns and soft feminine silhouettes articulated what the decade stood for. Grace and glamor combined to restore women’s curves with a new liberated freedom that heralded the huge changes in society’s image of women which took place in the mere twenty years between 1910 and 1930. The book commences with an excellent and concise essay which contextualizes the socio-economic forces in relation to the decades fashion. The book reappraises the work of long forgotten designers you may never have heard of such as Brunetti Mateldi, Antoinette, Marcel & Armand, milliners such as Marcelle Lely and Helen Julien. Designers long since eclipsed by the mythologizing of the big names like Chanel.
But most of all, what makes the 1930s Fashion Sourcebook worth looking at are the pictures, hundreds of pages of images of womens daywear, evening wear, swimwear, accessories, year by year from 1930 to 1939. Original fashion plates and previously unseen photographs of models wearing the ‘latest’ clothes.
The beautiful fashion illustrations from Chic Parisian, Le Petit Echo de la Mode and many others are mouth watering to say the least. A hugely valuable resource for anyone interested in the 1930s era, whether an enthusiast or a fashion or design student. Highly recommended. We’ll be interviewing the authors soon to glean from them personally how they put this project together, which incidentally is a follow up to their 1920s Fashion Sourcebook.
Read 1930s – The Golden Age of Glamour for Women’s Fashion for more excerpts and images from Fiell and Dirix’s 1930s Fashion Sourcebook.
