20th Century Fashion Ethnic Inspirations, Fuzzylizzie Vintage

~ Ethnic, 20th Century Style ~

20th Century fashion had an on-again, off-again love affair with ethnic looks from around the world. From the Oriental craze of the early years of the Century to the re-emergence of Bohemian looks at the end of it, the ethnic influences of the 20th Century add lots of spice to our fashion history.

Women had been flirting with Orientalism in the form of fabrics for several centuries. Shawls of Eastern design were in high favor for many years, along with paisley and other Oriental prints. But in the designs of Paul Poiret, Oriental motifs came to the forefront of fashion.

Closeup of Victorian Shawl

Costume from the 1921 production of the Ballet Russes' The Sleeping Princess. This costume is in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.

Poiret opened his salon in 1903, and he was soon designing dresses that did not require the wearing of a corset. He began experimenting with bolder colors (perhaps influenced by the art of Matisse and other Fauve artists). He was soon traveling to the East in search of fabrics to use in his designs.

In 1909, Sergei Diaghlev and his Ballet Russes debuted in Paris. The costumes of designer Leon Bakst became a major source of design inspiration from 1909 into the 1920s when the ballet disbanded. Many of the ballets were based on Oriental subjects, such as Scheherazade, but even European topics such as The Sleeping Princess had costumes that were based on various folk costumes from Eastern Europe and Russia.

And while Poiret claimed not to have been influenced by the Ballet Russes, the current rage for all things Oriental, as inspired by the Ballet, made the work he was already involved in all the more popular.

In 1911 Poiret staged a party - "A Thousand and Second Night" - where his wife Denise stunned the gathering with her Arabian themed costume; tunic with full pantaloons, topped with a turban. Poiret himself wore a caftan and turban, and was seated upon a throne, and for a time, he was the Sultan of Paris Fashion, as his Oriental collections continued to be successful up to the beginning of World War I.

1922 Poiret design as pictured in Harper's Bazar. In the 1920s Poiret's clothes continued to be exotic in design.

Another designer of this period who is known for his exotic designs is Mariano Fortuny. In 1907, Fortuny made the first of his Delphos dresses, a design inspired by the costume of Ancient Greece. Fortuny continued making various forms of this dress into the 1920s and beyond. He also printed textiles, using Japanese and Islamic inspired motifs, and often borrowing design ideas directly from antique Oriental textiles.

The dress to the left is a full length Delphos dress. The fabric is finely pleated, using a process that was known only to Fortuny. The resulting dress is very Greek goddess-like.

Photo copyright and courtesy of Pinky-a-gogo

~ The 1920s ~

When the decade of the 1920s started, the world had just been through some very rough times. Europe had been left devastated by WWI, and soon after, the world was in the grip of a horrible flu epidemic. Fashion was understandably somber through this period. But when the world started to return to a more normal existence, exotic fashion blossomed.

Although Egyptian themes had been popular due to an Egyptian exhibit at the Louvre in 1911, the biggest craze for Egyptian-inspired fashion began in 1922. In that year Howard Carter unearthed the tomb of Tutankhamun. The photographs of artifacts found in the tomb had a vast impact on fashion as hieroglyphics and designs such as scarabs and lotus flowers became common motifs for clothing, accessories and jewelry.

These motifs were a great fit with the Art Deco style, with an emphasis on geometric shapes and stylized shapes from nature.

1920s Linen Embroidered Dress

European Needlework Blouse from the 20s

There were lots of other ethnic influences in the 1920s, perhaps brought about by a world becoming "smaller" due to improvements in transportation and mass communication. Middle and upper class people were traveling and bringing home folk costumes as souvenirs.

These became so popular that they were imported for sale into the United States, and needlecraft companies published how-to books so women could make their own "authentic" European needlework. There was also a continuing fascination with the Ballet Russes and other performing groups that dressed in European folk fashion.

It's also likely that world events played a role, with the ending of the Russian Revolution and the death of Lenin drawing attention to Russia, the rise of Ghandi and the Indian independence movement drawing attention to India, and the Turkish War of Independence drawing attention to Turkey and Eastern Europe. China was often in the news, with the death of Sun Yat-sen and the rise to power of Chiang Kai-shek.

1920s Handbag with Chinese Dragon Motif

A 1920s Silk Kimono-styled Dressing Robe.

Orientalism could be seen throughout the decade in both fabric design and in the shape of garments. A craze for kimonos led not only to the shape being used in women's coats and loungewear, but also determined the motifs used in fabric design, especially that of chrysanthemum flowers. Lightweight kimono-shaped dressing robes became the robe of the 1920s, as seen in magazine photos and silent movies as well as in mass marketing catalogues, such as this example from a 1929 Montgomery Wards.

Firms such as Liberty of London and Babani of Paris led the way with Oriental-styled textiles. There were also companies such as the Pohoomull Brothers of India who exported Oriental textiles to the West, and even set up shops in areas where tourists would be shopping. The coat to the right was bought in Egypt by a tourist from Pennsylvania. But it isn't Egyptian in origin; it's Indian Shisha mirror work. The world had indeed become a multiculturally fashionable place!

Fashion changed dramatically after the crash of the stock market in 1929 and in the early years of the 1930s.

Buxbaum, Gerda, ed, Icons of Fashion: The 20th Century. Munich: Prestel, 1999.

Ewing, Elizabeth, History of 20th Century Fashion. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974.

Kennett, Frances, The Collector's Book of Fashion. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1983.

Laver, James, Costume & Fashion. London: Thames and Hudson, 1982, 1995.

Robinson, Julian, The Golden Age of Style. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

Embroidered applique and Shisha coat, bought from the Pohoomull Bros. establishment on the grounds of the Old Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor, Egypt.

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