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Article Excerpt
Debates over women's fashions and identity in the 1920s are central to an understanding of modernity. The cultural focus on gender at this time was central to the understanding of social change and its implications. (1) Throwing off shackles of the past, modern fashions--outer as well as underwear, hairstyles and use of cosmetics--came to be a metaphor for wider social, political and cultural changes for women in the western world, including Australia. The up-to-date, fashionably clothed and accessorised female body became a highly charged space where differing notions of femininity, personality and sexuality were negotiated, and where values and ideologies overlapped and competed. (2) Without doubt, fashion was a particularly visible way in which women came to be re-imagined after the war. But more than this, these vibrant new fashions gave women the opportunity to re-imagine themselves as being up-to-date. (3)
Women of all classes, particularly young women with economic independence, could access this new cultural language of consumption, as the notion of purchasing shifted from simply stocking up to more leisured and entertaining shopping experiences. (4) The new styles were deeply challenging of old-fashioned norms of ample bodies and female respectability. Wearing colourful, liberatory and boyishly slender garments, along with shorn hair, was to some not so much a demonstration of asexuality, but an assertion of a new, even dangerous, form of allure and seductiveness. (5) Thus the 1920s was a period when femininity and women's fashionably clothed bodies, embedded in the new consumerism, became a public site of conflict and contestation, as differing discourses about femininity, appearance and sexual freedom proliferated. It was a time when visual spectacle carried special messages to a feminine public of mass consumption. (6)
Bearing in mind the social complexity of the post-World War I period, and fashion's significance to the marking of modern femininity, it is useful to examine the operations, philosophy, retail methods and advertising rhetoric of the very successful Berlei Corset Co., founded in Sydney by Fred Burley in 1919. (7) This company, with its Australian-made credo (8), provides illuminating evidence of the complexity of the discourses about modern sexuality, health, fashionability and, indeed, Australian ideals of womanhood. Whilst accepting Sue Best's argument that Berlei represented its products as supplementing moral and physical lack (9), this essay concentrates on other complex ways the company offered consumers the opportunity to experience sensual gratification, as well as educating them about how to manage their bodies. It focuses on three aspects of the company's acumen: its business philosophy, its deployment of discourses of science and health, and its use of mass theatrical entertainment. Whilst racial purity does underlie some aspects of its rhetoric about national 'womanhood', Berlei complicates our understanding of the modern consumer, often stereotyped as the 'flapper'--a fast, boyish modern city-woman in short skirts who seemed to live for the pleasures and freedoms of the glamorous moment. (10) Acknowledging that a number of fashion historians have already begun to question cliches about 1920s fashions (11), this essay builds on their work, showing fashionable modernity to be about more than the orderly nature of streamlined, modernist ideas and liberation of women's bodies through standardised, up-to-date clothing.
Corsetry was by no means abandoned in the 1920s as is often believed. As agents and embodiment of 'line', corsets continued to dominate notions of female beautification. Corsetry sections were, in the first few decades of the century, a core and profitable aspect of Australian department and drapery stores. At the same time, they continued to have medical and surgical applications. In terms of fashion, however, and under the rubric of lingerie, boned and more rigid corset appliances were replaced with supple garments marketed as dainty trifles of silk and satin that few women could resist. (12) Actress Amy Rochelle confessed to having an absolute obsession with buying lingerie at this time, especially in mauve. In 1926 she told one interviewer, 'I've stacks and stacks, and when I see something heartrending in crepe-de-chine, in five minutes I've another parcel to carry'. (13)
Although corsets were increasingly sexualised in advertising toward the end of the Victorian period (14), and the repressive moral and material armature they represented softened, by the second decade of the new century their use had declined among the young and the war workers. (15) Manufacturers like Berlei, fearful about loss of sales, cunningly reshaped and reconceived them as lighter, more versatile and attractive items. Whilst their advertising copy still reflected old-fashioned anxieties about morality, it promised that these products would prevent figures from becoming loose; would gently correct or supplement them; and would assist in digestion and circulation. In particular, they would assist the modern Australian 'girl's' quest for health and 'eternal loveliness'. Berlei was instrumental in reactivating interest in the return of so-called womanly beauty after the more informal postwar years. (16) Interestingly, this somewhat mature ideal harked back to the first years of the century, and did not encourage the boyish 'flapper', whom the company regarded as a flash in the pan.
It is important to note that not all women in the 1920s wore the popular cipher of the slimline garconne look, with waistless dresses and cropped hair. Fashions could be quite romantic, even coquettish, such as flimsy dresses fully gathered at the waist and trimmed with ribbons and organza. These were called...
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