DOWNTOWN — Chicago in 1929 was the city of gangsters, jazz and drop waists — lots and lots of drop waists.
The city's fashion for spring in that year is on display in a video from the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina. The film is silent, but it shows women modeling cloche hats and head wraps with loose, flowing skirts and dresses or fur-lined jackets.
The video, featuring outtakes from a news story, was meant to show what was en vogue for women the spring and summer of '29.
The decade was a major turning point for women's fashion: hems rose, waists fell and outfits became less form-fitting as an extension of women gaining more independence. Makeup became more popular and women curled their hair and trimmed it into bobs.
The video's not all serious, though: The models laugh, talk and smile while twirling around or standing together.
Watch the video:
The Moving Image Research Collections seeks to preserve films made outside the feature film industry. It holds 11 million feet of fragile silent and sound films that document news and global events from the 1920s to 1940s that were produced by Fox Movietone.
The Fox library was given to the university by the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation in 1980, and the university works to restore them and make them available to the public.
