photos from the Jazz Age Lawn Party, July 18, 2010

[mlleviolet]

Last weekend was the annual Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor's Island. I went on Sunday along with mystressprynne , thatjazz , exfish , and luxvalence . Below are some photos from the event. It will be repeated in August if you missed it and would like to attend.

Comments

[lookfar]

I love your hat! Tell me about it.

I wore a black panne velvet dropped-waist dress with a lace skirt to my junior prom - authentic Jazz age, and the skirt began to fall apart as the evening progressed, leaving little bits of lace on the dance floor.

[mlleviolet]

Thanks! It was a lucky thrift store find, like $3 in Baltimore. I could never find anything like that in NYC, at least not for that price. I am not sure if it's authentic 20s, it might be more like 40s. The beads are plastic, not glass, although plastic was around in the 20s.

Yeah, the original gowns tend to fall apart - there's a lady in white in the 9th pic above whose original gown is completely tattered.

The dropped-waist sleeveless dress is curiously unflattering on me - I'm afraid I just don't have the body to be a flapper. They were supposed to be slender, flat-chested, and svelte. Next time maybe I will go in drag....

[cuddyclothes]

The last photo--aren't those dresses more Edwardian?

You look great. Not all flappers were boyish.

[mlleviolet]

Yeah, kind of Edwardian, however, not all 20s women were flappers. It was considered a more daring look and some women still dressed conservatively. Those white lacy dresses were typical summer attire and often made of cotton lawn. They were called "lingerie" dresses and a popular choice for tea parties women's graduation ceremonies. They were more characteristic of the 1900-1920 era than the Jazz Age.

Thanks for the compliment! A good flapper would have bound her breasts and probably worn some sort of girdle to flatten the figure, but I didn't see any point in binding my DDD cups to get maybe a D cup, still too ample for the stylish flapper figure. Flappers were also typically a lot younger than me - I would have been a matron in those days! (Or spinster, rather!)