Fashioning the College Woman: Dress, Gender, and Sexuality at Smith College in the 1920s

On December 15, 1920, the student newspaper at Smith College- one of the largest and most prominent of the American women's colleges, located in the small town of Northampton, Massachusetts-reported that the class of 1923 had begun a "dress reform" movement ". . . with the especial aims of appropriateness, modesty and good taste" ("1923 Launches Dress Campaign" 2).1 Students decided to create posters, hold fashions shows and play competitions, and spread the idea of dress reform through conversation and personal example (Class of 1923). The most striking aspect of this incident was the consensus among a number of Smith College students that there was a need for dress reform in 1920. The nineteenth-century dress reformers, generally mature women, promoted clothing that was quite removed from the fashionable mainstream (Cunningham 1-6). In contrast, the young women who attended Smith in the 1920s aimed to bring fashion back in line with their understandings of appropriate self-presentation. The Smith Alumnae Quarterly reported, "(The sophomore class of) twenty-three does not mean to start a dress 'reform' in the old meaning of the word. They feel that beauty is not incompatible with modesty ..." ("Won't You Take the Chance?" 234). Scholars have documented that fashions of the 1920s, particularly as they related to changing gender roles, caused extensive debate in the media (Fass; Kitch 121-35; Latham; Peiss 134-66; Schreier 19-33; Standish 172-272; Steele 236-42; Yellis). But what meanings did women themselves ascribe to popular fashions and to what degree were those meanings contested? Margaret Lowe, who examined college women's fashions at Smith and other campuses during this period in order to understand changes in body image, argues in Looking Good: College Women and Body Image, 1875-1930 that female students ". . . shaped their . . . attitudes about looks and self -presentation, with dating and marriage very much in mind" (111).2 Although this statement is true, other layers need to be investigated. Especially in the early years of the 1920s, Smith women found the fashion poses popular on campus to be controversial. Students linked fashion to women's progress, managing changing ideas of femininity and feminism as well as their role in a national consumer culture. At the same time, these women used fashion as one means of negotiating not only their attraction to but also their discomfort with the image of the sexually assertive woman. Attempting to shape their peers' appearances and the interpretation of them served as one method through which Smith students navigated the experience of being modern college women. Historical Context Women's fashions- the general look of the clothes worn by women across ethnic and class boundaries throughout the United States- engendered debate in the 1920s, in large part because they signaled such a sharp departure from the carefully molded female figure of earlier centuries. The silhouette of the 1920s, evolving from the designs of French couturier Paul Poiret introduced in 1908, incorporated comparatively looser construction, shorter skirts, and more relaxed foundation garments (Ewing 92-108). As short hairstyles and visibly obvious cosmetics entered the mainstream, they added significantly to the perception of a break from tradition (Ewing 9596; Peiss 170-71). Yet much of this controversy can be traced to changing ideas about the relationship between fashion and identity. In the early twentieth century, advertisers, consumer magazines, retailers, and the motion picture industry aggressively promoted the new idea that individuals could achieve self-fulfillment by constantly recreating themselves through consumption. This shift had specific ramifications for women, as fashion and beauty products became fundamental to their construction and expression of public and personal identities.3 Elizabeth Wilson argues that one of fashion's core functions is to define gender boundaries (117). …