Too Fat to Flap? – & Other Musings on 20s Style

“Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.”

— Virginia Woolf (Orlando)

Prohibition poster gals

The other Saturday night was Prohibition night: a night where peeps get together to relive the roaring twenties; sipping booze from china whilst doing the Charleston; and sizing up each other’s sartorial prowess – or some such ballyhoo. I don’t know, I used to love dressing up, I also used to love all things vintage … well, maybe not all things, but 1920s is definitely not my cup of cha.

Flip flapping away...

First I got in a minor mental flap over the dress: there is no way I’m shelling out hard earned cash for a dress I’m never gonna wear again AND which’ll make me look like a sausage bursting at the seams. The fat flapper – sounds like a sea lion – is not a look I relish sporting.  And so I fashioned me a dress from an old fringed scarf and a slip. It served as a distraction:  “No, it’s not me that’s all wobbly, it’s the dress.”

Jazz babies

Then I got to watching the House of Elliot, or at least the first two episodes someone has uploaded to Youtube, and got all disgruntled about sexism and well… clothes.  For one thing, the freedom the corset-less ‘flapper’ dress spelled for the feminine form was not as liberating for the curvy gal as it was for the gamine gal.

Don't look now, but ...

As much as I would love my wavy hair to be poker straight and my hips to be even straighter it’s as though curves have predestined me to feel like a fat, round peg in the jazzy juvenile hole of the twenties and thus not fit to flap.

Feelin' fruity

Not that I’m complaining, much. It’s just all this thinking about being boyish has made me more body conscious than usual. Although it’s not unusual to feel trapped in a woman’s body in a man’s world, it’s really only when you come to squeeze yourself into a style from an era your body wasn’t made for that you realise how lucky we are to live in a time where almost anything goes – in theory at least.

Flapping good ethi-cool style:

• Pachacuti – get up cloche & personal in hats with soul
• Annie’s – get the original dress & bead the best
• Ivana Basilotta – a lotta ethical silk dresses with a 20s twist for SS 2011