The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

The rule of the new fashion mode: complete freedom |-|OLLYWOOD created the flapper as a mode, as a type and as a state of mind. How will the screen adapt itself to the new fashions and the new types of feminine siren? In this authoritative and revolutionary article, you will find the answer to your clothes question. Olive Borden, although the small, flapper type, has a pictorial quality that enables her to wear an extreme, formal princess gown. And, below, you see how Joan Crawford, by a few inches added to a skirt, achieves a compromise with the new style. Her skirt is a good, safe length for street wear Now the word is 'be your age — beautifully.' The mode is divided into the young girl modes, and the sophisticated matron mode, suitable to those around thirty, and over. The sophisticated cut and line, with exquisite simplicity, with revealing fitted body line, its long skirt, and extreme decollete, will be more beautiful than anything we have had in our era, but it is not a youthful mode. '"Only the really young can look youthful in the present mode. Their youth shines triumphant through the dignifying medium. The new mode will aid women to conceal defects with the flattering long skirts. The slim body fitting line is more difficult. The slender woman as always will be more beautiful because she is graceful and pliable." Max Ree, designer for RKO, where Olive Borden and Bebe Daniels work, and who first glorified Greta Garbo, says: "Beauty is in the entire balance, not in any one definite line. We must accept new ideas and adapt them. This takes time and thought. There are rules for harmony in line; width and length have a certain balance that must be kept. We always go back to the classic models in studies of beauty of line. ISADORA DUNCAN showed with her use of drapes that action can be accented by leaving the movement behind it in the air, expressed in a following floating drape. I believe, then, that clothes should be designed to suit the use to which they are to be put. A Charleston dancing age, with jerky movements, could not use anything but the short skirts with no sleeves that were so popular. A floating drapery would have become confused in the jerks and shown no motion accent. Short fluttery tabs were acceptable. So now, for modern styles, sport clothes must remain short and sleeveless, and of angular lines, with pleats, box coats and such things. For the dinner gown, the formal afternoon gown, the dance frock, our national prosperity and increased dignity of living is expressed in the dignity and luxuriousness of the long floating gowns. The revival of the waltz and the tango and the return to formal modes of living are expressed in the tea gown, the formal afternoon gown and the elaborately simple evening mode. "Sophistication and beauty are in the new mode. The mermaid silhouette with its fascinating, concealing and revealing lines, is more alluring than the flapper modes of complete exposure. These gowns conceal imperfections and reveal only perfections. They can be adapted to any type of girl by study." SOPHIE WACHNER, designer for William Fox, who presides over the sartorial destinies of Sue Carol, Lenore Ulric, Marguerite Churchill and Lola Lane, and who has designed for Mary Pickford, Vilma Banky, Estelle Taylor, Geraldine Farrar and hosts of other celebrities, says: "There is no reason that the flapper figure as such should not be perfect for the new modes. The princess mode is the most difficult 70