Fashions for December 1922

December 1922 fashions

Loretta reports:

We complete this year's historical fashion plate cycle with a set of patterns and fashion news from the Delineator for December 1922.

The New in New York by Evelyn Dodge

“The jacket blouse and the blouse jacket have elbowed their way well to the front of the Fifth Avenue windows and New York almost killed a very charming style with the kindness of its enthusiastic reception. The jacket and the blouse are twins so much alike that their own mother-designer has difficulty in telling them apart. In many cases they can be used interchangeably, but as the weather grows colder the blouse jacked is more and more made of the fur cloths and heavier clokies, while the jacket blouse appears in the matelassés, crêpe silks and velvets.

"The best Fifth Avenue houses are making their separate skirts quite generally with camisole bodies instead of inside belts. There are two reasons why the camisole is a better bet than the belt with the present styles. If the belt is large enough to rest low on the hip, it is almost impossible to keep in its proper place. If it fits the normal waistline, it has a curiously high-waisted look, an optical delusion produced by the very general acceptance of the lowered waistline.  Practically all blouses, except the under-the-sweater type, are worn outside the skirt. If the blouse is white or partially transparent, the upper part of the skirt shows through when it is mounted on a belt. The camisole does not bring the skirt above the low waistline and it can be made of white China silk if it is to be worn under light, transparent blouses. The camisole top also make an excellent foundation for the jerseys or open-work sweaters that are worn so much in place of blouses ...

"With longer skirts and the more formal type of draped dress the bobbed-hair girl has had to grow up overnight. The closer hair-dressing is partly responsible for the vogue of the long earring, which for evening reaches almost to the shoulder. Some of them seen in the Fifth Avenue windows are made of heavy red gold in long, narrow Egyptian designs triangular in shape. Crystal is very smart for evening or afternoon. Very large hoop earrings are also worn in fine lines of jet or jade or amber.”

December 1922 fashion descriptions

The Delineator, which sells Butterick patterns, offers pages and pages of fashions each month, including children’s clothes, underwear, and sleepwear, as well as ideas for low-cost gifts. If you’re interested in this era, it’s well worth a look.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption link will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Rare Survivors in New York City: Sylvan Terrace's Cobblestones & Row Houses, c1880

Susan reporting,

When most of us think of Manhattan, we picture towering skyscrapers, sleek walls of glass and stone, midtown streets crowded with cabs, cars, and bustling pedestrians. Small 19thc wooden row houses and a quiet cobble street: not so much.

Yet the street shown here is indeed in Manhattan, in Washington Heights near 160th Street. I discovered it by accident, on my way to visit the 18thc Morris-Jumel Mansion (more about that in a later post.) No matter where you live, the scene may look familiar, because it has appeared as a location in numerous period films.

The street is called Sylvan Terrace. In the 1880s, the city's growth was creeping uptown, and the open fields and gardens that had so long insulated the Morris-Jumel Mansion were finally being divided into streets and house-plots. Developer James E. Ray commissioned twenty identical row houses, built on what had once been the Mansion's carriage drive. Because the neighborhood was so far uptown from what was considered the "city," the houses were exempt from fire codes that stipulated brick or stone construction, and could instead be made from less expensive wood over high brick basements.

The new street was given the pastoral name of Sylvan Terrace, another indication of how far it still was from downtown. The houses were modest, and the residents were middle-class, tradesmen and small merchants. The neighborhood continued to grow around them, larger and more lavish brownstone townhouses followed by larger-still apartment buildings. In a city where buildings are routinely knocked down within a generation to build something new,  all twenty of the little frame houses on Sylvan Terrace miraculously survived.

But time did bring changes. The original cobblestones were paved over with asphalt, and the houses themselves gradually lost most of their wood trim. Some were fronted with stucco facades, others sheathed in aluminum siding or false brick. The basic integrity of the street remained, however, and in 1970, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission created the Jumel Terrace Historic District.

In 1981, Federal funds restored the facades to approximate their original unified appearance; the backs of the houses still reflect 20thc remodeling. The asphalt paving was removed from the cobblestone street. Reaction to the restoration seems to have been mixed at the time. Residents complained that the work had been shoddy, and a few rebellious owners began repainting the new facades. In an 1989 article about the restoration, The New York Times deplored its "deadened homogeneity."

Visiting today, it appears that the disgruntlement of the 1980s has been forgotten, or at least put aside. The houses appear beautifully maintained, and unified in their color schemes - which I personally found more harmonious than homogeneous. Perhaps it's not so much a matter of taste, but economics, that has brought peace to Sylvan Terrace. The houses seldom come on the market, but when they do, their charm and history come at a price: $1,500,000 and up.

Above: Photograph by Susan Holloway Scott.
Lower right: Photograph via Curbed NY.