American Culture, Dress, and Identity in the 1910s

This study provides a detailed examination of the cultural, social, and dress transformations that define the United States during the 1910s.

Daniel Delis Hill presents a decade in which accelerated modernization reshaped American life through advances in science, technology, and manufacturing. Mass production provided new labor-saving electric appliances and convenient, safe processed foods to the homemaker. Ever more, Americans experienced greater mobility as automobile assembly-line production made cars affordable for the masses. Ready-to-wear manufacturing provided inexpensive adaptations of the style trends from Paris and London. In popular culture, the uniquely American ragtime music was fresh and modern, inspiring a dance craze of tangos and fox trots, while movies presented new ideas of social behavior and dress. Meanwhile, a world war further upended social conventions as women donned trousers to work outside the home and finally received the vote. Four million men put on a US military uniform and went to war to make the world safe for democracy.

With over 400 illustrations, this study chronicles the development of women’s dress from the floor-sweeping Edwardian S-bend silhouette to the scandalous mid-shin skirts of the war years. For men, the bulky Edwardian styles became trim and fitted, reflecting the youth culture of the era. In addition, this study includes segments on the Paris couture exhibit at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition, the first Made in America fashion campaigns, and the problems with counterfeiting of French couture.

By tracing how consumer culture, gender roles, and war mobilization intersected, the book demonstrates how America was transformed in the 1910s, losing its Victorian innocence and emerging on a modern world stage with prominence and promise.