Dresses for the part of the 1920s were all about the bling, writes Jane Malthus.
Heavily beaded or sequined diaphanous dresses were very fashionable for a few years in the mid-late 1920s, and some New Zealand museums have wonderful collections of them.
Straight or flared shifts of silk chiffon, georgette or net were embroidered with designs inspired by cubism, Egyptian motifs, floral patterns or the Bauhaus, for example.
The 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris, from which the term Art Deco was coined, inspired fashion and beading designers. The lines and forms of 1920s dresses represented the spirit of modernism and the ideal of the new woman, and the sparkling beads and sequins were designed to enhance the motion of the modern female body on the dance floor.
New dances were influenced by American music and dance, as well as by Serge Diaghilev's Ballet Russes and Isadora Duncan's natural style. The Charleston, tango, and the black bottom dance (yes, really) showed off the shimmery dress as well as the bare legs and arms.
Decorative patterns of beads were stitched on to fine fabrics with the idea that this would help the dress hang very straight. The beads used were mostly seeds or bugles. These had been made in various parts of Europe for centuries, but by the 1920s Czechoslovakia had become the largest supplier.
Seed beads were created from bubbles of glass, and then tumbled to make them round and smooth. Bugle beads were small tube shapes. Some beads were faceted, with plane-cut surfaces to allow greater play and reflection of light. Beads could be opaque, transparent, translucent, iridescent or metallic.
Sequins or spangles were often combined with beads on 1920s dresses. Circular sequins measuring 2-8mm in diameter were stamped out with a hole in the middle. Originally made from metal, they have also been created from coloured gelatin, lacquered rubber and plastic. Spangles could be circular, oval or rectangular, of various sizes, and had a hole towards one edge.
Traditionally, beads and sequins had to be sewn on to fabric by hand but in the late 19th century embroidery machines were adapted to attach them. These machines could cope with linear or wormlike vermicelli patterns, and the Cornely machine, which used a single-thread chain stitch with manual direction control, could couch chains of beads or sequins in a variety of patterns using a universal feed method.
Tambour embroidery, a chain stitch done by hand using a tambour hook, was adapted for beading at the end of the 19th century by altering the hook slightly and by working from the wrong side of the fabric using a tambour frame. Beading this way was faster, neater and less expensive to produce when the beads or sequins were uniform sizes.
Although we don't know exactly where beaded dresses in New Zealand museums were made, because they were not usually labelled, France was a leader in their creation. The spread of this fashion was partly influenced by economics. Export earnings from French fashion were much reduced by World War 1, which had also raised labour and fabric costs.
However, when France devalued the franc in 1924, goods became cheaper for visitors. Newspaper reporters and retail buyers, including from New Zealand, went to Paris for fashion inspiration and to bring back clothes. Up until the stock market crash of 1929, luxury exports, including beaded dresses, flourished.
The young women who mostly wore these beaded dresses looked and behaved differently from their mothers. They bobbed or shingled their hair, and flattened their chests to attain a schoolboy figure. They took up physical culture and various sports.
Corsets, if worn at all, were lightly boned with elastic at the sides, and the new brassieres were designed to squash breasts rather than support them. Combinations became a favourite form of underwear. Flesh-coloured silk or rayon stockings were held up with garters or suspenders. Simple slips provided extra modesty and colour under the sheer beaded dresses.
Young unmarried women would save up from their earnings to buy a beaded dress, or might even make one with designs printed in the Otago Witness or stamped on to purchased fabric. Some women who were interviewed as part of the University of Otago history department's Caversham Project talked of taking turns to wear a beaded dress to the weekly dances.
We don't know much about beaded dresses being made locally, although "Marguerite'', fashion writer for the Otago Witness, did suggest in 1925 that local designers and dressmakers should be looking much closer to home for their inspiration (or cultural appropriation as we'd call it now!): "We go to the Nile for the Tutankhamen barge for a border, but what of the canoe; and to the wigwams for the scrolls of the Red man, but what of the tattooed ones? And we go to the old world garden for the spray, but what of the fern, which for some reason or other habit has limited to a badge.''
The fashion for these delicate dresses was short-lived and the garments themselves are fragile now. The beads and sequins weigh on the threads and weaken the silk fabrics. Perspiration under the arms and at the back where a dance partner placed his hand has caused deterioration of the fabric. The dresses often cannot be hung for display any more.
However, they are evocative reminders of a brief time of perhaps rather forced gaiety and liberation between the horrors of World War 1, the 1918 flu pandemic and the economies of the early 1920s depression, and the 1929 stock market crash.
Dr Jane Malthus is an honorary curator of the dress collection at Otago Museum and a senior lecturer in the Otago Polytechnic School of Design.
