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Dress
Silk crepe, glass beads
American, circa 1924
Woven label: "Martha Weathered/Chicago"
Gift of Gwenda Hammerness, 96.80

"Daisy began to move again with the season...keeping half a dozen dates...drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed." ... The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The "flapper" occupied the popular imagination of the early 1920s. Fashion's emphasis shifted from the married matron of the Edwardian years to this sporty, youthful, androgynous and thoroughly modern creature. The silhouette abandoned the matron's curves for the flat chested, tubular silhouette of a pre-adolescent girl. A slip dress that hung straight from the shoulders, skimming bust and hips, was the ideal of the period. Through the first half of the 1920s hemlines rose from the ankle topping out at the knee in 1926.

The dress was purchased in Sedona, Arizona where the donor was told that it had been worn to President Coolidge's inaugural ball. The dress had a second life in San Diego where it was worn to a costume murder mystery party.