Determination and Style 1930s Hollywood and Women's Lives Helen Sterk
Source: www.natcom.org
Topic: Women's Fashion
Sort Desciption: Classic theories of the dynamics that drive women's fashion, especially as ... how Hollywood's fashions were marketed to women through. advertising. ...
Content Inside: Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. 234 pages. $25.95 (cloth); $20.76 (paper). Think of women in the 1930s. In the absence of personal knowledge of the time, images of Joan Crawford, Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo most likely shape your thoughts. Feisty, courageous, able to meet challenges, these determined women stamped the era with their personalities and styles. In the films of the day, these actresses epitomized class in films such as Jezabel and Easy Street, reigned over royal spectacles in Queen Christina and Mary of Scotland, oozed exoticism in Mata Hari and The Bitter Tea of General Yen, and made their way in the business world in Skyscraper Souls and Big Business Girl. Film has made it possible for us to glimpse into the culture of the 1930sas seen through the eyes of Hollywood. Even more interestingly, argues Sarah Berry in her first scholarly book, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood, these pictures offer us a bridge into the lives of women in the 1930s. Classic theories of the dynamics that drive womens fashion, especially as articulated by James Laver, historian and social critic of costume, argue that the seduction principle motivates wealthy womens fashion choices. Berry suggests Lavers articulation of a single cause ignores other good reasons for haute coutures style changes and womens style choices. When women entered the work force, a social world not subject to the norms of home and society, they were faced with questions of selfpresentation and performance that were not answered adequately by the seduction principle. Influences on their choices included cues given by the setting of the workplace, surely. Further, ...
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