For my final class project for THR355, History of Fashion and Dress, I researched the women's clothing of the 1910's. This era is fascinating because,not only were corsets beginning to lose their restrictiveness, designers began to play with strange shapes to their garments. Many of the color drawings you see here are my own. All other images are taken from a spread on clothing through the twentieth century in Vogue magazine.

The first rendering that you see here was from a self-portrait photograph of a photographer circa 1910.

The second rendering is a day gown or tea gown from around 1911. At this point, certain types of dress were still appropriate for different events or times of day. These gowns are also often refered to as lingerie gowns as they are usually cut-work or lace and consequently have to worn over an under-dress...or not...heh, heh, heh.

The third gown is a rendering from around 1912-1913. It was taken from an image on a website dealing in antique garments. This dress is also worn over another gown as everthing in white on the rendering is sheer. There is extensive beadwork on the bodice and sleeves.

The fourth, fifth,and sixth gowns are all dating from around 1913. Poiret was an important designer of the time and the sixth image is his design. M. Poiret played around a lot with Mid-Eastern and Asian elements of dress in his designs. the fifth gown is a mourning gown. I have photographs of what I believe to be a real mourning gown dating from this time further on in the site.

This decade is particularly interesting to me because it reflects a drastic change in women's wear. During this time, we did not entirely lose the corset, but it loosened quite a bit. Hemlines rose. Skirts slimmed and flared and slimmed. Waistlines rose, especially, from my observations, on evening and special occaision gowns, between 1911-1914 and then fell and kept on falling between 1915 and 1919. Completely shapeless dresses were becoming increasingly popular, which is something we hadn't seen in Western dress since the early Middle Ages. As in every era, strange things were afoot with sleeves. There was a lot of experimentation with uncut sleeves...in other words, sleeves that were cut as part of the bodice, not cut out separately and sewn on; layered sleeves (see mourning gown page) and; three-quarter sleeves. In addition to this beadwork and finge became increasingly popular, particularly in the Poiret-inspired psuedo-Asian/Mid-Eastern patterns. Later in the decade,since you could now see the lower calves and feet, hosiery and shoes became more interesting, and example coming to mind is the jeweled Arabian slippers that Poiret commissioned from some shoe-making company in Italy, I believe.
In the first half of the decade, skirts slimmed to such drastic lengths as to seriously inhibit walking. These "hobble" skirts soon began to have slits that allowed for easier movement. A variation on the hobble skirt is the peg skirt. These skirts were cut much fuller at the top than at the bottom, giving the wearer an appearance of carrying pleated saddle-bags on her hips.
I have some crackpot theories as to the spirit behind these particular skirt designs that should, in no way be considered seriously.
The hobble skirts were very easy to rip in the course of a normal stride, therefore women often took to binding their legs together with cord to prevent this. In my mind, the people of this era were some serious S&M freaks. You lose the restrictiveness of corsets and what do you do? You bind a different body part, of course! As for the peg skirts? Well, in the preceeding eras, women's fashion was very centered on the rear. Bustles and trains were often more decorative than the front of the gown. I think that the peg skirt may very much have been a final nod to women's hips and posteriors. They certainly do accentuate those areas. once again, this is just my crackpot theory.