The Long and Short of it, The 100 year ago battle over, Skirts?

I hope one of my readers recognizes these houses or street, an unknown picture from my collection.

 

Note: While doing some other research, I came across this article in the Chester Times about the battle over long and short skirts from 100 years ago. My mother was a teenager in the 1920's and told me about the battles she had with her mom over what and not what to wear. A fun article.

 

 

 

 BATTLE RAGES BETWEEN LONG AND SHORT SKIRTS

                The conflict between the long skirt and its knee-length sister is steadily growing bitterer and more desperate.

                It has degenerated, as it inevitably must into a contest of streets – a battle between Fifth Avenue and Broadway.  And sisters just because Fifth Avenue is Fifth Avenue and Broadway is Broadway, don’t rush in too early and decide that it’s all over but the cheering.  Fifth Avenue has been defeated before in this never-ending contest for style supremacy and may be again despite the fact that Paris is definitely allied with the “Avenue” folks.

                The “comeback” of the long skirts is not popular with Broadway, because Broadway works and the ease and comfort of the short skirt has earned and indelible place for itself in the mind of the American girl.  The knee-length skirt is “smart;” it has “snap” and ginger.  It’s not hard to see it requires less goods and frankly, there are very few women living who do not believe but that they present a much more effective appearance in the short skirt than in its trailing prototype.

                That is why the short skirt persists.  Paris decreed its death almost a year ago.  London meekly followed.  But while the long skirt has unquestionably been making some popular praise, largely through the subterfuge of the side panel, yet, excepting that this veneer of people who take Parisian decrees as if handed down from the ultimate court of good taste, the long skirt has not yet been “put over.”

                And what makes this popular adherence to the short skirt even more remarkable is that it has occurred in the face of the desperate efforts of American and European dress manufactures who have exhausted every effort on the part of press agent and ballyhoo to make it appear as if the abbreviated skirt was doomed to be relegated back to the beaches and the chorus.  To date, however, the American girl has not been appreciably stampeded.

                CONTRAST IS SHARP – The contrast was sharply illustrated recently at the opening of the fashionable race meeting at Belmont Park. In the boxes Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Payne Whitney and John Whitney and Mrs. F. C. Convere all showed their loyalty to the long skirt.  Mrs. Convere’s skirt was particularly long, sweeping the very grass just as her mother’s did back in the days of the bustle and train of 1893.

                On the other hand another group including Miss Barbara Brokaw, Miss Beatrice Batterman and Miss Marion DeRahm, appeared in short skirts, slip-on sweaters and mushroom hats.

                The brutal facts in this long and short skirt contest are that the “young” ladies past thirty-five are generally found supporting the long length ideal, while the “flapper” and those just growing out of the flapper period are still able to see much of an attractive nature about the short skirt – and, of course, in this they are not entirely alone.

                If the question of the short or long skirt were placed before the Town Meeting it’s almost a certainty that the “eyes” would have it.

                FASHION NOTES – Slip-on sweaters of chiffon, alpaca and Shetland are popular.

                There is a rumor that one of the New York corset and brassiere manufacturers is going to produce a new form-fitting brassiere.  Women who wear brassieres have never been content with the tight straight bandeaux and brassiere that give one that shapeless appearance.  This new brassiere promises to support the bust and at the same time leave an indentation at the center from which any figure should have.

                White sandals with blunt toes that are like children’s shoes with cut work over the toes are popular with sport clothes.

                Many of the summer sunshades are small and doomed-shaped.

                At the Greenwich Village Fashion show the most noticeable novelty was the hand-painted legs.  Many of the models were stocking less with designs of batik painted upon their limbs.  Why paint the lily?