Choose Your Fan and Then Your Flutter: 1919

American Girls Reviving the Fan, That Fit Symbol of Fluttering Femininity

Approach of Period of Coquetry Foreseen in New Popularity of Long Fashionable Appendage

By Esther Harney

Fans are coming back into vogue again. They never go out of fashion, of course, for they are as old as coquetry, as gallantry itself. But today they are appearing in full blaze of glory, a sure sign, we are told, that an age of coquetry and extreme femininity is approaching as a reaction from the stern period of the war.

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/157322?rpp=30&pg=1&ao=on&ft=beads&deptids=8&pos=7&imgno=1&tabname=label

Manufacturers will tell you this news happily. Not for years have they had so many orders for fans of every description from the hand-made lace and tortoise shell varieties of the duchess to the little inexpensive chiffon spangled fan which the high school girls “perfectly adore” to flutter at school “hops.”

Manufacturers will also tell you that there could be no stronger evidence of a general return on the part of woman to her ancient arts and wiles than this reinstatement of the fan. (They are qualified to speak—of course.) During the war there was little time for fans and for femininity. Nor in that period which preceded the war did woman fancy fans; instead she preferred a riding crop or a tennis bat. It was not the fashion then, you will recall, to be delicate and feminine.

But today with all our boys returning from overseas from harsh scenes of war and from other scenes and adventures (oh, the reputed wiles of les belles Francaises), American women are beginning to realize that they must rise to the occasion. Femininity must rule supreme. (The soldiers like womanly women, they say.) and as a symbol of lovely femininity the women have taken up the fan.

International Imagination.

Then, too, American girls are looking to France these days. (They are trying to cultivate an international imagination, you know.) And among the French, fans are popular. With them, for instance, the wedding fan is an important item of the marriage trousseau. And was it not Mme. E Stael who recognized an art in the graceful handling of the fan? “What graces,” she wrote, “are placed in woman’s power if she knows how to use  a fan. In all her wardrobe there is no ornament with which she can produce so great an effect.” Verily the revival of the fan in American can be traced to the influence of France on the American doughboy…

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/156949?rpp=30&pg=1&ao=on&ft=tiffany&deptids=8&pos=4

Descended from Palm Leaf.

All ages have contributed to the history of the fan. It has it pedigree like everything else. If a thorn was the first needle, no doubt a palm leaf was the first fan. Standards of rich plumage were present when the Queen of Sheba paid homage to Solomon. Queen Elizabeth gave the fan a place of distinction and was the cause of prosperity among the fan-makers of her day. She is said to have had as many as 30 fans for her use. During her reign ostrich feather fans were introduced in England. Charlotte Corday of French evolutionary fame is said to have used a fan expertly : She held a fan in one hand while she stabbed Marat with a dagger which she held in the other hand.

Great painters of all ages have tried their hands at fans. One famous artist spent nine years completing a fan for Mme. De Pompadour, which cost $30,000. Period fans arose to commemorate events, follies and fashions of the day. Besides an intermediary in the affairs of love a fan became a vehicle for satire, verse and epigram.  

Coronation of Napoleon fan, 1807 http://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/117894

In the canons of “fanology” are described “the angry flutter, the modish flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, the amorous flutter.” A flutter for every type, you see.

American girls should then first choose their fan and then their flutter. Perhaps they will revive the art of miniature fan painting as a new profession for women. They should, of course, remember that they can learn much of the art of the fan from Europe (except from Germany. Can you fancy a German woman flirting with a fan?) and plan to obtain their practice on the back porch some hot July evening. That will surely amuse their soldier callers. And at least we all can afford a fan of the palm leaf variety. But if we must take up the fan, the symbol of the new age that is before us, just we also take up the spirit of the age in which it was wafted victoriously? Must we be Victorian?

Boston [MA] Herald 10 May 1919: p. 15 

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  And what, Mrs Daffodil wishes to know, is wrong with being “Victorian?” Alas, the author of this piece was entirely too sanguine about a return to femininity. Far from becoming more womanly, young persons shingled their hair, abandoned proper corsetry, smoked in public, and adopted sexually ambiguous costumes and attitudes. The queenly curves of the pre-War years gave way to a flattened feminine figure that caused many physicians to despair of the continuation of the species. Still, in one detail, the author was correct: The beaded and brilliantined females who thronged the night clubs, did carry fans—immense, vampish affairs of ostrich feathers or sequined chiffon–but recognizably fans. One might suggest that these accessories lent their name to the Girl of the Period: the Flapper.

For a school of “fan-ology,” see this post.  And for more details on how to select a fan, this post.

A vampish fan of the period.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Jabber Jazz: 1921

 

JABBER JAZZ? IT’S LATEST IN DANCE FASHIONS

Trot and Talk, but Don’t Forget the Conversation.

Chicago, Aug. 7 Now for the jabber jazz. The latest thing in dances for this fall is called the “conversation walk.”

Girls may nibble the complexion off their lips but they will have to talk to dance the new step.

The new dance has been planned for the country by the American National Association of Dancing Masters and was described today by Miss Florence Reid, instructor of an exclusive dancing school here.

When the jazz band starts the dance will go like this:

You greet your partner and move slowly down the floor talking in time with the music.

“Nice weather we are having.”

“I’ll say it is.”

Next you balance forward and back fox trot to the northeast, switch to a one step and resume:

“This bobbed hair fad is the cutest yet.”

“Sure, it’s got me cuckoo.”

Then you fox trot again, any direction you want to, but don’t forget to keep up the talk.

Of course a good dancer will memorize a verse of bright remarks and use them on each dancing partner in turn. They’ll not know the difference unless you dance with the same person twice.

“I don’t think the new dances are nice” Miss Reid added after explaining the “conversation walk.”

“The couples dance—ah—so close, you know, and so slow. This ‘conversation walk’ demands more vocal skill than terpsichorean dexterity.

“The new toddle dance of the season will be named ‘Chicago.’ It will be one of the big hits. It eliminates the horrid ‘Frisco step,’ which some cabaret patrons now use. I like the new ‘Culture dance’ best. It eliminates the toddling in the fox trot.”

“Yes,” said Richard Kandler, owner of several dancing schools, “we must insist this winter on graceful dancing. The music, too, will be without the barbaric jazz. The swinging beauty of the old-time polka must return. It is a symptom of returning sanity after war hysteria.”

Plain Dealer [Cleveland, oh] 8 August 1921: p. 5

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil believes that the fad was short-lived. After all, the entire purpose of ball-room dancing is to foster the illusion of intimacy, while eliminating actual conversation between the sexes.

The new dance had passionate advocates on both sides of the question:

But What If You Can’t Think of a Darn Thing to Say?

CHICAGO. Aug. 6. Well it’s here and what do you propose to do about it? It is the “jabber jazz” and it goes with bobbed hair and skirts to and above the knees and a scandalous lack of underwear.

The inventor of the new dance, if such contortions can be dignified by that title, calls it the “conversation walk” and it has some vehement backers among the dancing teachers. They argue that it eliminates the horrid “Frisco step,” which still is used by some cabaret patrons. It also takes the toddle out of the fox trot.

It may be said in defense of the “jabber-jazz” that it is less like a violent attack of St. Vitus’ dance than any recent movement. It lacks the spasmodic shudders and it is not essential that the dancers should be glued together.

Briefly, one greets one’s partner and they amble down the floor, talking all the time. Then they balance forward, fox trot a step or two, shift their gum to the other cheek, do a one-step tempo and resume the walk and conversation. It is all very well for those who have to indulge in such antics, but to old fashioned dancers of the waltz and redowa and schottische, the “jabber-jazz” looks like something the cat dragged in.

Pittsburgh [PA] Daily Post 7 August 1921: p. 6

If one wanted to look on the dance floor like something the cat dragged in, Mrs Daffodil can recommend the “Kitty Trot,” a dance sensation of 1919.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Encore: Choose Your Fan and Then Your Flutter: 1919

American Girls Reviving the Fan, That Fit Symbol of Fluttering Femininity

Approach of Period of Coquetry Foreseen in New Popularity of Long Fashionable Appendage

By Esther Harney

Fans are coming back into vogue again. They never go out of fashion, of course, for they are as old as coquetry, as gallantry itself. But today they are appearing in full blaze of glory, a sure sign, we are told, that an age of coquetry and extreme femininity is approaching as a reaction from the stern period of the war.

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/157322?rpp=30&pg=1&ao=on&ft=beads&deptids=8&pos=7&imgno=1&tabname=label

Manufacturers will tell you this news happily. Not for years have they had so many orders for fans of every description from the hand-made lace and tortoise shell varieties of the duchess to the little inexpensive chiffon spangled fan which the high school girls “perfectly adore” to flutter at school “hops.”

Manufacturers will also tell you that there could be no stronger evidence of a general return on the part of woman to her ancient arts and wiles than this reinstatement of the fan. (They are qualified to speak—of course.) During the war there was little time for fans and for femininity. Nor in that period which preceded the war did woman fancy fans; instead she preferred a riding crop or a tennis bat. It was not the fashion then, you will recall, to be delicate and feminine.

But today with all our boys returning from overseas from harsh scenes of war and from other scenes and adventures (oh, the reputed wiles of les belles Francaises), American women are beginning to realize that they must rise to the occasion. Femininity must rule supreme. (The soldiers like womanly women, they say.) and as a symbol of lovely femininity the women have taken up the fan.

International Imagination.

Then, too, American girls are looking to France these days. (They are trying to cultivate an international imagination, you know.) And among the French, fans are popular. With them, for instance, the wedding fan is an important item of the marriage trousseau. And was it not Mme. E Stael who recognized an art in the graceful handling of the fan? “What graces,” she wrote, “are placed in woman’s power if she knows how to use  a fan. In all her wardrobe there is no ornament with which she can produce so great an effect.” Verily the revival of the fan in American can be traced to the influence of France on the American doughboy…

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/156949?rpp=30&pg=1&ao=on&ft=tiffany&deptids=8&pos=4

Descended from Palm Leaf.

All ages have contributed to the history of the fan. It has it pedigree like everything else. If a thorn was the first needle, no doubt a palm leaf was the first fan. Standards of rich plumage were present when the Queen of Sheba paid homage to Solomon. Queen Elizabeth gave the fan a place of distinction and was the cause of prosperity among the fan-makers of her day. She is said to have had as many as 30 fans for her use. During her reign ostrich feather fans were introduced in England. Charlotte Corday of French evolutionary fame is said to have used a fan expertly : She held a fan in one hand while she stabbed Marat with a dagger which she held in the other hand.

Great painters of all ages have tried their hands at fans. One famous artist spent nine years completing a fan for Mme. De Pompadour, which cost $30,000. Period fans arose to commemorate events, follies and fashions of the day. Besides an intermediary in the affairs of love a fan became a vehicle for satire, verse and epigram.  

Coronation of Napoleon fan, 1807 http://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/117894

In the canons of “fanology” are described “the angry flutter, the modish flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, the amorous flutter.” A flutter for every type, you see.

American girls should then first choose their fan and then their flutter. Perhaps they will revive the art of miniature fan painting as a new profession for women. They should, of course, remember that they can learn much of the art of the fan from Europe (except from Germany. Can you fancy a German woman flirting with a fan?) and plan to obtain their practice on the back porch some hot July evening. That will surely amuse their soldier callers. And at least we all can afford a fan of the palm leaf variety. But if we must take up the fan, the symbol of the new age that is before us, just we also take up the spirit of the age in which it was wafted victoriously? Must we be Victorian?

Boston [MA] Herald 10 May 1919: p. 15 

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  And what, Mrs Daffodil wishes to know, is wrong with being “Victorian?” Alas, the author of this piece was entirely too sanguine about a return to femininity. Far from becoming more womanly, young persons shingled their hair, abandoned proper corsetry, smoked in public, and adopted sexually ambiguous costumes and attitudes. The queenly curves of the pre-War years gave way to a flattened feminine figure that caused many physicians to despair of the continuation of the species. Still, in one detail, the author was correct: The beaded and brilliantined females who thronged the night clubs, did carry fans—immense, vampish affairs of ostrich feathers or sequined chiffon–but recognizably fans. One might suggest that these accessories lent their name to the Girl of the Period: the Flapper.

For a school of “fan-ology,” see this post.  And for more details on how to select a fan, this post.

A vampish fan of the period.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Week-end Compendium: 23 January 2016

“The Snow Queen”

Mrs Daffodil  hopes that all of you are warm and safe from the impending snow-storms, or, if house-bound, have sufficient bread, milk, and brandy laid on.

This week’s links for Mrs Daffodil:

Sixteen-button Bouffants: A Chat with the Fashion Gazette Editor: 1888, in which an innocent young girl is given some quixotic fashion advice by a well-meaning male editor.

The Flapper and Her Corset: 1921 offers dire warnings to all flappers who wish to leave off their under-pinnings. An early example of “fat-shaming.”

The sad story of Old Lisbeth and her ghostly visit to a former master who had treated her kindly.

See Mrs Daffodil on Sunday for how to make a sandstorm on stage.

Over at the Haunted Ohio blog we find the following:

“Uncanny Meteors:” Spook Lights in New Zealand, in which a naturalist relates his very close encounter with apparently sentient glowing orbs.

The Ghost of Mary Seneff, who haunted the site of her watery grave, after she was hacked to death and thrown into a local creek.

From the Archives: Enough Rope: The Hangman’s Rope in the Press, a light-hearted look at specifications for hangmen’s ropes and the superstitions surrounding them.

Favourite posts of the week: Cellphones and the Paranormal. And The Awful Greatness of the Cherry Sisters.

A “Snowflake” costume by “Zig,” c. 1925. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1222891/costume-design-zig/

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead.

The Flapper and Her Corset: 1921

THE FLAPPER AND HER CORSET

American Women Will Not Be Tricked Into

Discarding Their Best Beauty Secret.

From the Autumn issue of The Gossard Corsetiere we publish the following paragraphs which will interest corset buyers and saleswomen generally. They contain a fund of information and a wealth of common sense, phrased in The Corsetiere’s inimitable style. That will go far toward neutralizing the superficial half thoughts that are floating so loosely about corset circles just now.

“And if you are careful to get the right corset and take the bit of trouble to put it on the way it should be put on every day—you’ll find Father Time a delightful artist with the most graceful and delicate touch. But if you neglect your figure Father Time can sketch a caricature with a refined cruelty that would be the despair of our best cartoonists. Just see what he has done to the middle-aged lady who left off her corsets to wear the style! And she is the image in the crystal to warn the young flapper of today who pats her already sagging figure and confides that ‘she doesn’t need corsets. Where are her mirrors and her friends?

“But Paris says you should not wear corsets! The Rue de la Paix was ever a faithless jade who makes sport of her blind devotees. She says one thing and does another. Only the other day the L’Illustracion published a list of leading Paris style creators who had put their manikins back into corsets. And why? Well, have you by any chance seen those chic new suits that everybody is wearing in Paris—those little highwaist-line coats flounced about the bottom and fitted like the tango suits of the men? For the first time in years Paris is making suits—the men’s tailors are—and Paris likes it. New York and Chicago haven’t quite decided yet but the same Rue de la Paix whose false lips whisper to the world to discard corsets and run the most certain chance of ruining the possibility of wearing any kind of clothes becomingly—slyly slips into clever stays so she may wear the trim smoothness of the fitted suit.

“But of course it is not enough corset to show—for corsets ought to be the most retiring adjuncts to beauty that you are called upon to buy. Rouge, powder, lip stick—they’re all permitted out in the open in these days when we make French posters of our long-suffering faces. But the woman who looks corseted, whether the fatal defect shows in constriction and bad proportion or in an ugly line so easily seen through that revealing wisp of unfeeling organdy that woman just isn’t smart.

“American women are far too clever to be tricked into discarding their best beauty secret, and they will wear corsets today and tomorrow and for a long, long time to come. But they will be the right kind, and if we may look for any good results from these Parisian conversational hors d’ouvres about discarding corsets, I venture the opinion that it will be found in more clever corset artistry and in a more intelligent selling of this important garment in the corset departments of our stores.”

The opinion of the Gossard Corset Co., on the subject of the necessity of corsets, was substantiated by their chief designer, Ethel Lloyd Minifee, who has just returned from Paris. The Corset and Underwear Review, Volume 18, 1921

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: This was, of course, not just a matter of business for the writers at The Corset and Underwear Review, but a subject of the highest aesthetic importance to Society. Mrs Daffodil is reminded by the following poem of the odious “fat-shaming movement,” so popular among the lithe and genetically-blessed. The verse is a parody of the dialect poem “Little Orphan Annie,” by James Whitcomb Riley, in which the chorus goes “‘an the Gobble-uns ‘ull git you/Ef you/Don’t/Watch/Out!”  “Nemo” corsets and “Rengo Belts” were brands of “reducing corsets.”

The Flapper’s Warning

Eve G. Swift

You’ve observed the little Flapper, with her lines both slim and dapper,

As so daintily along the street she trips.

With no corset on her figure; still it seems to you she’s bigger

Just a bit above her ankles than her hips.

This maid is in her glory—but there’ll be another story

When she finds, alas, that she is going stout!

That her figure unprotected looks untidy and neglected

So the “Nemos” they will get her

If She Don’t Watch Out!

 

She goes about her dancing in a manner quite entrancing.

Now her corset she will naturally park.

When with body quite unhampered, through each Jazz dance she has scampered.

Sh feels as if it’s been a jolly lark.

But this maid, a wee bit naughty, will find out before she’s forty

That she’s fat! Perhaps we’d better call it “stout”

That a Flapper turns a Flopper with no corset there to stop her,

So the “Rengo Belts” will get her

If She Don’t Watch Out!

 

Now you Flappers all take warning or you’ll realize some morning

That un-noticed all your slender lines have fled—

That your form without protection has swelled out in each direction

And you’re in the “Extra Size” class now, instead.

You may think the gowns you’re sporting need no corset’s firm supporting.

You may think you’ll keep your shape, without a doubt—

But some day you’ll find it’s slipping and you’ll notice you are hipping!

So the “Stylish Stouts” will get you

If You Don’t Watch Out!

The Corset and Underwear Review, Volume 18, 1921

Mrs Daffodil has frequently written on the subject of corsetry; please look at the other posts under that heading.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.