About MFIT

The Fashion and Textile History Gallery

1900-1949

Even before the First World War (1914-1918), society was changing rapidly due to industrialization, urbanization, and the rise of a mass consumer culture. The unprecedented carnage of the war further accelerated this process of change by discrediting traditional values. In fashion terms, the corset had begun to give way to the brassiere as early as 1908, when the avant-garde fashion designer Paul Poiret proposed a new “corsetless” silhouette. Equally significant, however, were social and cultural changes, such as a growing enthusiasm for sports and a new aesthetic that favored a slim, girlish figure, rather than the voluptuous curves of the Victorian era.
 

During the 1920s, fashion played an important role in the creation of the modern woman. The short skirts and bobbed hair of 1920s flappers were not simply a reflection of women’s liberation; rather, they actually contributed to a new perception of women and thus, increasingly, a new reality. Women designers, most famously Coco Chanel, were also extremely influential in the 1920s and 1930s. The Second World War (1939-1945) effectively destroyed what was left of traditional European society, resulting in the political dominance of the United States. Yet despite the rise of the “American look” in
sportswear, Paris fashion made a strong comeback after the war, in part due to the international success of Christian Dior’s “new look.”