Introduction
While several changes in American culture have taken place, especially in fashion and film, more attributes are linked to the film industry, Coco Chanel and the Victorian era, which had great influence on women fashion and their relationship. To this end, Joshua Zeitz postulated that "??the younger generation has been changing through the last twenty years"?? (Zeitz, 2007). Moreover, "??girls, for instance, have found the accent shifted from chemical purity to breadth of viewpoint, intellectual charm, and piquant cleverness"?? (Zeitz, 2007). Women are normally influenced by the ever-changing fashion trends. Indeed, in many occasions, every woman likes to identify with a particular fashion that is unique and suits her instinct, not forgetting that the fashion choice is current and blazing. Notably, the influence of fashion on women has a long history tracing back to 1860s. From that period, women have always shopped for almost every new fashion that the designers bring to the market. Besides, it is usual that a woman keeps herself to a single fashion for a long period, but continues to make frequent visits to boutiques to checkout for a new fashion in the market. Furthermore, popular designers have always concentrated on checking the women preferences, and coming out with exemplary designs that attract more percentage of women.
Women’s fashion and behavior always had their greatest influence on the social world, in which fashion industry and the entertainment world play the larger role, demonstrated in the book in quotes like “She is a good girl, but she was blinded to a true perception of life by the white lights of Broadway.” (Zeitz, 2007, p.4)
Great changes of these aspects can be observed all throughout history.
In the last part of the 19th century, and beginning of the 20th, we can see one of these big shifts.
Before this shift the Victorian ideals were the society’s rulers: the woman was supposed to obey and serve her husband, honoring the marriage vows with no right for divorce. Her role with be to take care f the house and husband. She should be educated and follow the guidelines society expected for her. Chastity, pureness, modesty were traits she should always have. It was ideal to have etiquette and manners.
The Victorian women's clothing was a mirror of such restricting ideals: the dresses were long and elaborate; the skirts should have a wide volume, with layers of heavy materials. Women should use a corset to narrow the waist to the smallest size possible. This made the clothes heavy, difficult to wear, restricting of the movements and, in the worst cases, put the woman’s own health in danger.
The strict, harsh Victorian ideals are portrayed when saying: “Eugenia couldn’t have struck a sharper contrast with her mother, Helen Kelly, a matronly widow () clad in an old-fashioned, long-necked black dress whose severity found only the slightest relief ()”. (Zeitz, 2007, p. 1)
Women began to get tired of the restricting rules of Victorian society, which gave them no voice for expression. Teenagers began to rebel against these constricting standards and destroy the sense of a “perfect image”, to indulge their senses and desires: “Walking beside her lawyer, nineteen-year-old Eugenia impressed bystanders as unexpectedly well poised and confident. She sported “a green shade Norfolk suit” (), a white silk shirt waist with a loose, rolling collar, and a bright red necktie. Her wavy hair was covered by a tri-cornered brimless hat of black straw, decorated with yellow and a rosette.” (Zeitz, 2007, p.1)
Women wanted to be recognized as equal to men, with the same rights, freedom, comfort and privileges. They wanted to have a voice, to strip out of their restricting roles and, more literally, their voice-suffocating, restrictive-society portraying clothes: “Women have highly resolved that they are just as good as men (). They don’t mean to have anymore unwanted children, () be barred from any profession or occupation which they choose to enter ().” (Zeitz, 2007, p. 7)
In the 1920’s, the image of a New Woman was getting every day more defined and popular, in which women were now speaking their mind, going out to drink, to a bar, smoking, and wearing much looser, smaller clothes that allowed to show the figure: “by the early 1920’s () the notorious character type who bobbed her hair, smoked cigarettes, drank gin, sported short skirts, and passed her evenings in steamy jazz clubs, where she danced in a shockingly immodest fashion with a revolving cast of male suitors.” (Zeitz, 2007, p.5-6)
All that was being spread by the media was loud, bright, glamorous, fun and shouted as their main ideal the sense of freedom: of speech, of behavior, of sexuality, of emotions. The sound of the music, the colors of fashionable clothes or the themes of shows and movies were filled with drama and an explosion for all the senses.
This, of course, was a great influence to the “under-construction” minds of those days’ teenagers, who wanted to be like the women that the posters, pictures, films and shows promoted. Thus, fashion also began to change and, wanting to sell more, gave way, for these girls, to the look they were seeking to have and fed their desires.
One of the most recognized fashion personalities that helped promoting and spreading throughout the world this kind of look was the infamous designer Coco Chanel.
As a defender of a free, independent woman of strong personality, who likes to have fun, be sensual, casual and is not ashamed of her body and desires, Coco Chanel brought to the post World War I fashion sense a youthful, casual, sportive confidence, that was expressed by a boyish figure, skinny and long, hair cut up short in a crop, tanned skin, short skirts, loose dresses and all of this in easy wearing comfortable materials.
On another founding area of this rebellious look, the film industry had famous actresses like Clara Bow, Colleen Moore and Louise Brooks, starring Hollywood’s major films.
Once again, the short crop cut, the loose casual clothes, the makeup, the lean boyish figure, the sex-symbol characters in the films that these women played evoked the flapper style. Furthermore, the films’ plots always put them in scenes where their sensuality and freedom of behavior were the mainly expressed traits, rising them as the heroines: “In California, () Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks, Hollywood’s great flapper triumvirate, fired the imagination of millions of filmgoers with their distinct variations of the New Woman.” (Zeitz, 2007, p. 9)
These actresses and the kind of films that were produced with them, at the time, were both the portrait of such new age of bold, rebellious traits and the motivation the young women of the time had to pursue the so wanted look of these icons, act like them, be the protagonists of their own lives.
The media, the fashion designers, the icons, the films of that time all shouted out the image of the flapper and that was, indeed, the most fashionable, desired look and attitude that any young woman desired to have: “The pioneer merchants of cool invented the flapper for fun, for profit, and for fame. In branding and selling her, they inaugurated that curious, modern cycle by which popular culture imitates life and life imitates popular culture.” (Zeitz, 2007, p. 9)
Conclusion
