The Long and Short of it, Dresses of Course!!! DCHPN Meeting tonight Please come

A group of Chester Ladies at a Sun Ship launching c.1925 Look at the heights of the various dresses.

 

 

 

NOTE: While doing some research on the Chester Times Newspaper Microfilm, I came across

this hysterical article from the summer of 1922 about the changes in women's dresses. Please read!

 DCHPN is having a talk at the Wallingford aka Helen Kate Furness Library tonight, please come. Read below for more information.

 

 

 

 

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?

 

 

 

DCHPN Meeting Tonight

All Welcome!!

Join us at the Helen Kate Furness Free Library,100 North Providence Road, Wallingford, PA 19086 on Monday November 25, 2019, 7:00 - 9:00 pm in the Chadwick Auditorium (Lower Level), with the Delaware County Historical Preservation Network. ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF PRESERVING HISTORIC PROPERTIES will be presented by Shelley Ashfield of the Chester Historic Preservation Committee.

 

 

How can we forecast economic conditions and trends for historic properties? What tools are available to help you identify your historic property? What regulations are in place to preserve local properties? How do building conservation, preventative maintenance, and adaptive re-use figure into the picture? Local expertise from the Delaware County Planning Department will be on hand for question-and-answer after the photo presentation.

Whether you're a long-time resident with deep roots in the area, or a newcomer just becoming familiar with the history of the Delaware Valley, this lively seminar will entertain, inform, and re-invigorate your interest in where we live.

 

Our speaker: Shelley Ashfield brings a unique set of disciplines to her membership with Chester Historic Preservation Committee, including building construction, site planning, engineering logistics, and historical analysis. Current projects include the story of Third Presbyterian Church on Ninth and Potter, which this June merited a place on the National Historic Register. From Buffalo, NY, Shelley trained as an engineer at NYS College of Ceramics at Alfred. She served as Tennessee Gas Transmission's first female groundskeeper in Coudersport, PA; performed engineering analysis with a Federal-level survey team of every public and commercial building in the Richmond, Indiana and Muncie area; as draftsman/site planner with Dennis Duffy Associates in Absecon, NJ.

In 25 years at Boeing Helicopters, she prepared Comanche LHX proposal, produced illustrations for Chinooks, and performed logistics analysis for the V-22 Osprey. Retired, she now performs with Tapestry historic dance ensemble for audiences throughout the Delaware Valley.