Western fashion in the 1930s was characterized—in womenswear—by a departure from the boxy, boyish look from the previous decade in favor of a more mature and feminine silhouette, with the return of natural waistlines and a heightened emphasis on glamour, elegance and sophistication. The era is well framed by two major world events: the 1929 Wall Street Crash, with the ensuing Great Depression that lasted until the end of the decade; and the onset of World War II in 1939. Since they are situated between the "roaring" era of the 1920s and the period of war-induced austerity of the 1940s, the 1930s are often overlooked in fashion history discussions and reduced to a mere transitional era. Nevertheless, the 1930s saw many changes and innovations in fashion design, technology and consumer culture, and has been referred to as the "Design Decade" both contemporaneously and in modern times. The period was also one of expansion and consolidation of the Hollywood film industry and its star system, which became a key actor in the setting and dissemination of fashion trends, a role hitherto dominated by the haute couture centered in Paris.
Although the 1930s were considered a period of great modernity in clothing, the new styles were defined by a reinterpretation of the past. At the beginning of the decade, the neoclassical style—so called because of its ancient Greek influence—emerged and defined the look of the period, which highlighted the natural female figure through the innovation of the bias cut. Pioneered by couturier Madeleine Vionnet, the technique consisted of cutting the fabrics at an angle instead of in a straight line, which made them drape smoothly over the woman's figure. This meant that for the first time in the history of Western fashion, dresses skimmed to the body without any sculpting underlayer. Other styles that characterized the decade were romanticism, which recovered elements of Victorian fashion; and surrealism, epitomized in the work of designer Elsa Schiaparelli.
Some of the leading fashion designers of the 1930s include the French-based Vionnet, Schiaparelli, Madame Grès, Jeanne Lanvin, Edward Molyneux, Jean Patou and Robert Piguet; the British Norman Hartnell and Victor Stiebel; and the Americans Hattie Carnegie, Jessie Franklin Turner, Nettie Rosenstein, Valentina, Sally Milgrim and Elizabeth Hawes, among others. The most influential costume designer of Hollywood was Adrian, with Orry-Kelly, Travis Banton, Walter Plunkett and Dolly Tree also being prominent. The decade was also the heyday of fashion illustrations, as well as a time of great growth for fashion photography, with influential figures like Edward Steichen, George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P. Horst, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Cecil Beaton, Martin Munkácsi, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes and John Rawlings. Some of the female fashion icons of the era include Hollywood stars such as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard and Ginger Rogers, as well as socialites like Daisy Fellowes, Mona von Bismarck, Barbara Hutton and Wallis Simpson, who rose to fame for her relationship with King Edward VIII, a style icon in his own right. Other menswear fashion icons of the 1930s were also Hollywood stars, among them Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Errol Flynn.
Women's fashion General trends Sophistication amidst the Depression
The 1930s are well framed by two major world events: the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the outbreak of World War II in 1939, situated between the "roaring" era of the 1920s and the period of war-induced austerity of the 1940s, and defined by the decade-long severe economic crisis of the Great Depression. While the fashion of the previous decade had been characterized by great modernity and liberation, with an emphasis on youthfulness and a straight, flat silhouette that hid feminine curves, the 1930s took off with a shift towards a more womanly and elegant form, with hemlines coming down and the waistline returning to its natural position. This change in the female silhouette has often been attributed to the effects of the Great Depression, as a clear expression of the end of the Jazz Age. For example, dress historian James Laver wrote in 1960: "It was as if fashion were trying to say: 'The party is over; the Bright Young Things are dead.' As in 1820, the return of the waist to its normal position symbolized a movement towards a new paternalism: in economic terms the American Slump; in political terms the rise of Hitler." In the United States, rural populations were already making attire from recycled cotton feed sacks since the early 20th century, but the economic struggles exacerbated by the Great Depression made these "feed sack dresses" even more widespread in the 1930s, prompting companies to offer printed and better-quality options to appeal to lower-income communities. The effects of the Great Depression even reached the fashion of Parisian high society, according to a story published by The New York Times in July 1932: Summer soirees held in Parisian embassies, long famous for the brilliance of the women's costumes, this year reveal many gowns of the last year's vintage worn with jewels worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The jewels remain as souvenirs of more prosperous days, while the price of a new frock is often lacking. Many of the wealthiest women who have not yet felt the pinch are dressing more simply than last year, since they feel ostentatious costume is bad taste these days. White satin gowns are favorites with many smart women for formal embassy function, since they can be worn with different jewels and varicolored wraps and slippers. They follow somewhat classic lines, which have not varied markedly within the last two years and may be worn without appearing hopelessly out of date.
A notable shift in color also marked the decade's opening years. Black, which had dominated fashion in the late 1920s, gave way to white and off-white, prompting Vogue to observe in June 1931: "It would appear that white has sought to fill the place left vacant by black." White became the default for evening, formal daytime occasions, and town wear, though black continued to be worn, often combined with icy pastels or saturated jewel tones, and a wide range of sophisticated tertiary shades appeared in both day- and eveningwear.
Although the new look of the 1930s is often described as a radical change triggered by the Great Depression, a closer inspection reveals that it was rather a continuation of trends from the late 1920s. The flat, almost cubist silhouettes of the early 1920s gave way to more form-fitting shapes in the latter part of the decade; between 1927 and 1928, dresses began to follow the body's natural lines again, closely hugging the hips due to the inclusion of diagonal waist panels. The waistline, which had been absent at the beginning of the 1920s and then appeared lower, returned to its natural height by the end of the decade, and hemlines, which had steadily risen to their highest point between 1925 and 1926, dropped again in 1928, often featuring floating panels at the back and sides of skirts and dresses. Thus, as noted by fashion historian Emmanuelle Dirix: "even before the Crash, the main features of what we now remember as a typical 1930s silhouette were already in place." Likewise, Karina Reddy of the Fashion Institute of Technology pointed out: "Despite these departures from the prevailing mode of the previous decade, the popular styles of the early 1930s were similar in their simple lines to the popular garçonne look of the twenties. But while the simplicity of the 1920s created a sack-like silhouette free from curves, the simple lines of the early thirties hugged those curves, creating a soft, feminine silhouette."
It could be hypothesized that the Great Depression of the 1930s would have prompted an increase in skirt hemlines as a practical response to material scarcity, yet they remained long until the decade's end. Similarly, despite rising conservative ideologies around the world, 1930s fashion notably diverged from understated and modest sartorial expressions, instead witnessing a flourishing of opulent and glamorous fashion trends that contradicted prevailing socio-political currents. In the context of a 2014 exhibition focused on the decade, The Museum at FIT described it as a "startling paradox", noting that it "is a compelling irony that the elegant and progressive qualities of 1930s fashions emerged during one of the most tumultuous periods of modern Western history", and that "despite these crises—or maybe in reaction to them—the 1930s exuded an especial elegance: the blatantly beautiful neo-classic, art moderne aesthetic." Likewise, Dirix wrote: "This is what is so intriguing about a fashion study of the 1930s—it allows us to see that whilst fashion may be inextricably bound up with culture, the way it influences and is influenced by the world is neither obvious nor overtly logical. To understand fashion one not only has to look at the culture that produced and consumed it, but one also has to be able to 'read' the garments themselves."
The streamlined silhouette carried an unexpected social logic: the new clothes simultaneously disguised wealth and concealed financial decline, serving as what one historian described as "inconspicuous consumption for the rich few and inexpensive good taste for the newly hard-pressed middle class." Yet if the new clothes leveled visible class distinctions in dress, they exposed something else entirely: the figure beneath. As Vogue described the fashions, they were "ruthless new dresses," and the sentiment associated with Wallis Simpson—"You can never be too rich or too thin"—captured the spirit of an era in which a slender, toned physique had become a marker of privilege. Liberation from the corset meant, paradoxically, an intensified preoccupation with the body itself: the reducing salon, the appetite-suppressing cigarette, and the girdle all flourished as women worked to achieve the necessary silhouette. It was in this context that Viennese psychiatrist Paul Schilder, working in New York, coined the term "body image" in 1934 to describe the culturally mediated and socially dependent relationship between individuals and their physical selves—a concept that had, as he observed, become newly urgent in the age of the streamlined dress.
The bias cut and neoclassicism
Although the decade saw the return of natural waistlines and longer skirts and sleeves, fashion historian James Laver noted that "there is no exact parallel between the fashions of the early 1930s and those of a century before, for the waist did not become excessively tight and the general lines of the skirt remained more or less perpendicular."
Crucial to this new silhouette of the early 1930s was the so-called bias cut technique, which involved "cutting fabric on the bias at a 45 degree angle on the woven fabric against the weave". The bias cut was championed by French designer Madeleine Vionnet in the 1920s and, by the early 1930s, it became a popular style for creating garments that lightly hugged a woman's curves, contributing to the overall slender look of the era. Vionnet, who called herself an "enemy of fashion," believed in the body as its own best support structure: "A woman's muscles," she said, "are the best corset one could imagine." In particular, the body-skimming style dominated eveningwear, characterized by satin dresses with low backs that hugged the body's curves and flared at the bottom, creating a "fluid and feminine silhouette". The resulting silhouette was, as Laver described, "slim and straight, being sometimes wider at the shoulders than at the hips", with couturiers employing every device to convey an impression of height—including dressing the hair close to the head.