Showing Skirts

Showing Skirts

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.627

In the 1920s, lightweight, loose-fitting, and shortened skirts were an expression of women’s newfound social and sexual freedom. From Kodak to Vogue, advertisements pictured young female consumers flinging skirts to indicate a sense of carefree independence.

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.626

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.670

Photography also gave women a new medium with which to define their self-image, and holding one’s skirt out for the camera came to signify innocence, femininity, and charm.

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.667

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.671

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.631

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.629

But there is a fine line between agency and conformity in capitalist culture. Both fashion and snapshots are what Geoffrey Batchen calls “odes to conformist individualism,” the pervasive desire to simultaneously look like ourselves and like everyone else.

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.672

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.668

Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.669