Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/44746
Clockwise from left: A look from Prada's Fall runway, Kate Moss and Jamie Hince at their "rock and roll 1920s" wedding, Paz de la Huerta's Lucy Danziger in "Boardwalk Empire" and a look from Chanel Resort. into the 1920s more athletic, career-minded generation of women who were determined to have fun. Their clothes reflected a determination to bounce back from the horrors of World War I—to live life with a sense of abandon. Role models like Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, and Louise Brooks appeared in Hollywood with their blood red lips and ankle-revealing hemlines. Grace Coolidge arrived at the White House in 1923, the first truly athletic and socially engaged political wife to live there. She volunteered for the Red Cross, went hiking in the Black Hills of North Dakota, and wore flapper dresses and cloche hats. Where politics, movies and models go, fashion almost always follows. And the flapper has been endlessly revived in fashion, most famously in Christian Dior's 1954 collection where he reinvented the "Debutante slouch" of the 1920s by dropping the waistline to the hips and flattening the bust. Time magazine declared that Dior had "abolished the bosom" with a look that would "delight dress merchants and throw husbands into mumbling despondency." More recently, in 2008, designers like Miuccia Prada, Alexander McQueen and Raf Simons for Jil Sander It's fair to say that the look of the moment has a muse in the footloose flapper. 50 BAL HARBOUR revived fringed flapper-style dresses. For his spring 2011 Louis Vuitton show, Marc Jacobs drew on the deca- dence of the 1920s, citing that era as the inspiration for his richly beaded fringe dresses, bobbed hairstyles, and Art Deco-inspired Chinoiserie details. Last fall, Prada brought the flapper back yet again with paillette- covered dresses and fur-collared cocoon coats. Similarly, Karl Lagerfeld, who showed his resort collection for Chanel at the jazz-era Hotel du Cap in Antibes, caught the 1920s trend with drop-waist tweed dresses and Art Deco-inspired black and white graphic swimwear. And come spring 2012, when Luhrmann's Gatsby is due to hit screens, it's likely that many more de- signers will be looking to that proverbial green light at the end of the dock for style inspiration. Kate Betts is author of "Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style."